


Come Home to my Heart

by OctopusQueen



Series: But We’re the Greatest, They’ll Hang Us in the Louvre [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Anal, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Barebacking, Blow Jobs, Bottom Eddie Kaspbrak, Boyfriends, Cock Warming, Come Shot, Domestic Fluff, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Established Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, M/M, Makeup, Makeup Sex, Nipple Licking, Nipple Play, Oral Sex, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Rimming, Sex, Size Kink, Size Queen Eddie Kaspbrak, Smut, Top Richie Tozier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:55:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23506456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OctopusQueen/pseuds/OctopusQueen
Summary: Another fic in the universe of But We're the Greatest, They'll Hang Us in the LouvreRemember way back in Our Days and Nights when it was briefly mentioned that Richie and Eddie once had a huuuuge fight? No? Oh well, this is about that fight. Well, 50% the fight, and 50% them having mind-blowing makeup sex, obviously.It takes place about a year after the events of A Rush at the Beginning, but it can stand alone if you haven't read any other fics in this series.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: But We’re the Greatest, They’ll Hang Us in the Louvre [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654378
Comments: 23
Kudos: 155





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the Lorde song Supercut and the whole fic is kind of loosely inspired by that song if you wanna give it a listen.
> 
> Thanks once again to bebe8s and exercisingpotato for all your help and encouragement.

In my head I do everything right

When you call I’ll forgive and not fight

Because ours are the moments I play in the dark

We were wild and fluorescent,

Come home to my heart

  * Lorde, Supercut



  
  


Richie whistled offkey as he bounded up the steps to his apartment, bag of groceries swinging from his arm. He dug the key out of his pocket and unlocked the door, inhaling deeply as he stepped inside, revelling in the scent of the plug-in diffuser Eddie had bought at Bath and Body Works last week. It smelled like cinnamon and vanilla and most of all like  _ home _ .

The apartment felt so different now that he and Eddie were a couple. It was still the same crappy old set of rooms, but it almost felt like it was an entirely different place than it was when he and Eddie had been living in it just as roommates. Back when they were living just as friends.

For one thing, they’d both moved into Eddie’s room; it was slightly bigger and nicer and had a walk-in closet. Plus, he had nicer furniture. They mostly just used Richie’s old room for storage now. 

The rest of the house had changed as well; now that they were dating, Richie no longer felt the need to fight against each and every one of Eddie’s adjustments to the place. It had been a defense mechanism that he hadn’t even realized he’d been utilizing, pretending not to like it when Eddie got new furniture or home accents. He’d always protested before, not because he didn’t like seeing Eddie’s little touches around the house, but quite the opposite actually: it was because deep down, he was anticipating the day when Eddie would move out and leave him and all these little pieces of Eddie would be gone. Or worse, Eddie would be gone but  _ they’d  _ still be there, lingering, reminding him of Eddie every day.

Now that they were boyfriends, he was happy to see Eddie hang new curtains, or rearrange the living room, or switch out their towel racks. Because now he knew for certain that when Eddie eventually left this place, Richie was going to leave with him. 

And so were the towel racks, probably.

“Honey, I’m home!” Richie called loudly up the stairs, stripping off his jacket and stepping out of his shoes.

“I’m right in here, stop shouting, idiot,” Eddie responded from the kitchen, and Richie followed his voice in to find him sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea and flipping through a magazine.

“Hey babe,” Richie greeted happily, setting the bag of groceries on the counter before leaning down to give Eddie a peck on the lips. “I got stuff for dinner.”

“Thanks,” Eddie responded, giving Richie a kiss in return. “How was your meeting?”

“Oh, it went fine,” Richie turned away as he answered, hiding the uncontrollable smile that had spread out over his face. 

“Just fine?”

“Yep. Absolutely fine,” he answered casually, moving over to the counter to start unpacking the groceries. “So, they had a couple things on sale at the store, I was thinking we could make-”

He was cut off by Eddie, who had stood up from the table and come up behind him, and was now digging his fingers into Richie’s sides, half tickling, half just poking violently.

“St-stop!” Richie tried to squirm away from him, but Eddie had him pinned against the counter, so he could only flail in place and giggle.

“Tell me what happened!” Eddie commanded, trailing his hands up to dig into Richie’s ribs.

“Okay, okay,  _ okay _ ! Just- just stop!” Richie spun around so that his back was against the counter and wrapped his arms around Eddie’s waist, pulling him in close to his chest and smiling down at him.

Eddie wrapped his arms around Richie’s neck, leaning in and smiling up at him, the golden light of the late afternoon shining through their kitchen window and casting a beautiful glow on his face.

“Just tell me what happened.”

Richie fully intended to, he really did. But first, he couldn’t help leaning down to capture Eddie’s lips in a kiss that he truly intended to be chaste, but once he felt those perfect, soft lips against his, he felt the need to deepen it, sliding his tongue gently into Eddie’s mouth. For all his desire to get information out of Richie, Eddie happily kissed him back.

Richie pulled away first, looking down at his boyfriend. Eddie’s brown eyes sparkled in the sunlight, and the golden sheen danced across the freckles on his nose.

“You’re beautiful,” Richie mumbled.

Eddie rolled his eyes in response, but the slight upturning of his lips and the pink flush across his cheeks gave him away.

“Yes, yes, I know,” he cocked his hip slightly, hands playing with the hair at the back of Richie’s neck. “Now come on, tell me what happened.”

Richie was going to tell him. He really was.

But damn if he wasn’t going to drag it out.

“So I get to the comedy club,” he began, Eddie listening attentively. “You know, the one at the corner of the 5th and main. The one that Charlie runs. The one that I’ve been doing occasional standup at for the last year and a half. The one that’s starting a weekly cabaret night and is looking for someone to host. You know, like an actual regular job, that has a steady salary and benefits, but would still let me do my standup when I open and close the night. A job that would put a ton of money in my pockets and also help to take my career to the next level.”

Eddie huffed in annoyance, whacking Richie in the center of the chest.

“Yes, Jesus Christ, I know. It’s all you’ve been talking about for the last two weeks.”

“Right. And you know how I just went to have a meeting with Charlie, the owner of the place, to talk about the possibility of me filling that position. You know, the host position.”

Eddie nodded rapidly, motioning for Richie to get on with it.

“So, I just had that meeting. Just now. Right before I went to the store and got stuff for dinner. I got some spaghetti, and some tomatoes, and some garlic, I thought maybe we could make our own pasta sauce like we did when-”

He was cut off by Eddie raising his leg and bringing it heavily back down, stomping on Richie’s foot.

“Ow! Domestic violence!”

“Just fucking tell me what happened, you complete imbecile!”

“Well, if you absolutely must know, I got the job. I start on Friday.”

There was a moment of silence as Eddie looked up at him, eyes wide, mouth agape, processing the information.

“You... you got it?”

Richie nodded.

“You really got it?”

Richie nodded again, biting his lip and trying to contain his smile.

“Oh my God, you got it!”

Richie laughed as Eddie jumped up into his arms, banging his knee on the counter behind Richie. He spun them around quickly, setting Eddie down on the counter and leaning down to capture his lips again, both of them smiling into the kiss.

_ If this were a movie, this would be a moment when music would swell in the background _ , Richie thought to himself as he continued to kiss his boyfriend, deeply and passionately, cupping his face in his hands.

“Screw cooking dinner,” Eddie said when they finally separated. “We should go out somewhere. Celebrate.”

“With me picking up the bill?”

“Duh,” Eddie huffed and rolled his eyes with a smile. “I saw the numbers you’re gonna be pulling in now. You’re gonna be picking up a lot of bills now, buddy.”

Richie laughed and gave him another quick kiss.

“Happy to.”

He kissed him again, once again sliding his tongue into Eddie’s mouth.

“But I was thinking maybe we could stay in tonight,” he murmured lowly against Eddie’s lips. “You know… find another way to celebrate?”

“Mmmm,” Eddie hummed against his mouth as Richie slid his hands down to Eddie’s hips. “I suppose we could figure out something… celebratory.”

Richie pressed his lips back against Eddie’s as Eddie hooked his ankles on the small of Richie’s back, pulling him in close. 

They stayed just like that for a while, making out on the kitchen counter, and Richie couldn’t help the broad smile that was spread out across his face. He was so thrilled about his new job, but none of it compared to this. Even if he hadn’t gotten the position, he would still get to come home to a loving boyfriend. He would still get to spend the evening kissing and cuddling the love of his life. Jobs would come and go, but this,  _ this  _ was going to last forever. Richie just knew it.

Eventually Eddie placed a hand on his chest and pushed him back slightly so he could hop down off the counter. Richie looked down at him adoringly; his face was slightly flushed, his lips red and swollen from kisses. He almost didn’t notice Eddie turning them around until he felt the edge of the counter digging into the small of his back.

He moved to wrap his arms back around Eddie’s waist, but Eddie surprised him by abruptly dropping down to his knees and grabbing onto the front of Richie’s belt.

As much as Richie had been enjoying the tender moment with his boyfriend, seeing Eddie down on his knees for him took him from zero to horny in a nanosecond. He could feel himself already growing hard as Eddie unbuckled his belt and undid the button and zipper of his jeans. He grabbed onto the counter behind him with both hands, his breath quickening with arousal.

Eddie smirked knowingly up at him as he tucked his fingers under the waistband of Richie’s pants as well as his boxers and pulled them both down to Richie’s hips, making him shiver as the cold air hit his growing erection.

He wasn’t cold for long, because Eddie immediately ducked his head to take Richie into his warm mouth, sinking down onto him and quickly sucking him to full erection.

“Oh,  _ Eddie _ !” Richie threw his head back, fingertips still gripping the edge of the counter behind him so hard he thought he might break it in half.

Eddie hummed happily around him in response, starting to bob up and down on his dick. Richie wasn’t sure if Eddie loved sucking dick in general or if he just loved sucking Richie’s dick, but God did he seem to enjoy it, and not even just in the bedroom. What really drove Richie wild was moments like this, when they would be in the kitchen or the living room or even in the hallway, just living their lives like normal, and he would just suddenly drop to his knees and pull out Richie’s dick and go to town on him. Richie had never had a lover like this before; someone so spontaneous, someone who was so sexually exciting.

And of course that was all on top of the fact that it was  _ Eddie _ , the boy he had literally been in love with his entire life. Richie would have been happy having nothing but missionary sex once a week for the rest of his life as long as it was with Eddie. Discovering that Eddie was actually a bit of a sexual dynamo was all just a bonus.

He reached down to stroke a hand softly through Eddie’s dark hair as he continued to blow him, torn between tender feelings of adoration and the primal desire to grab Eddie and throw him onto his back on the counter, taking him right there in their kitchen.

“Oh… oh God baby, that’s fucking amazing.”

Eddie pulled off, licking and sucking his way back up Richie’s cock. He pressed his lips against the tip and looked up at Richie with his big brown eyes, maintaining eye contact as he parted his lips and sunk all the way down, as deep as he could possibly go, so deep he was choking a bit and his eyes were tearing up, but never breaking eye contact with Richie.

“Oh,  _ fuck _ !”

Richie buried his hands in Eddie’s hair, resisting the urge to fuck forward into his mouth. Eddie had gotten so much better at deep-throating him in the year that they’d been dating; he’d still struggle and gag a bit, but he could take almost the entire length of his dick at this point, which was a feat Eddie was very proud of.

“God, that feels so fucking good, baby,” Richie praised, continuing to stroke his hair and the back of his neck.

Eddie bobbed a couple more times, lips wrapped tightly around Richie, before pulling off of him again with an obscene pop. He stood back up on shaking legs and pulled Richie’s head down for a deep kiss. 

Richie happily kissed him back, moving his lips sensually against Eddie’s, which were now wet and swollen. He would have kissed him longer, but Eddie pulled away to plant a trail of kisses and tiny nips along the line of Richie’s jaw.

Richie wrapped his arms back around Eddie’s waist, pulling him in close again as Eddie made his way to his ear and breathed against it hotly.

“Do you think we should take this upstairs?” Eddie inquired, voice low.

Richie only nodded eagerly in response.

“Mmmm… you know what I think?” Eddie pulled away to look at Richie, and Richie gazed down at him, eyebrow slightly raised in question. “I think… you should finish putting the groceries away.”

Richie whined softly as Eddie stepped back and out of his arms, a downright evil smirk on his face.

“Hurry up, I’ll be waiting,” he called casually over his shoulder as he walked out of the kitchen, ass wiggling as he walked in a way that was definitely deliberate, leaving Richie standing against the counter, panting, pants and boxers still down around his thighs.

Richie groaned softly as he pulled his pants back up, but there was already a smile forming on his face.

“Fucking tease!” he called after Eddie, who he could hear climbing the creaky stairs up to their bedroom.

He chuckled a bit as he began unloading the groceries from the bag. They’d always taunted and teased each other, they had since they were kids, and while many aspects of their relationship had changed when they’d started dating, deep down they were still those same boys, those same friends, who used to trip each other and push each other out of the hammock.

And Richie wouldn’t have it any other way.

He put everything away as quickly as he could; Eddie liked the kitchen to be a particular way and Richie had learned to respect that. Once the vegetables were rinsed and in the crisper drawer and the cans were all placed neatly on the appropriate shelves with labels facing outward, Richie finally began bounding up the stairs after Eddie, taking them two at a time.

Eddie was already naked when he came into the room, lying on his back on his bed, legs bent and spread wide, bottle of lube next to him, and Richie’s mouth went dry when he saw that Eddie was already fully hard and fingering himself. Richie’s erection had gone down a bit while he’d been dealing with the groceries, but the sight of Eddie like this was enough to have it immediately back up.

“Hey, that’s supposed to be my job,” he quipped, indicating to the fingers in Eddie’s ass. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it in the direction of their laundry hamper.

“Ugh, finally,” Eddie retorted with an eyeroll. “Thank God you’re here, I just can’t quite do it the way you can.”

Richie finished stripping off the rest of his clothes before climbing onto the bed with Eddie, setting between his spread legs. He took a moment to admire the sight of Eddie fingering himself; he already had three of his thin, delicate fingers tucked snugly inside his hole; before reaching forward to grab Eddie’s wrist, tugging it gently to pull Eddie’s fingers out of himself.

Eddie whined slightly at the feeling of emptiness when his fingers slid out of him, but it quickly turned into a high-pitched moan when Richie immediately dove in to wetly lap at his hole.

Richie grabbed Eddie’s legs right under the knee and lifted them up, pressing his legs into his chest and practically folding him in half as he continued to eagerly eat his ass. The area was completely slicked up with lube that had a slightly unpleasant taste, but Richie didn’t even mind. He just loved eating Eddie out. Just seeing the pleasure it gave him, just seeing how he could take Eddie apart with nothing but his tongue…

Eddie had been stretched out enough that he was able to easily slide his tongue inside, wiggling it a bit and fucking it in and out of him until he was a complete mess, writhing uncontrollably and moaning Richie’s name like he was praying to him.

Eventually he pulled his face out of Eddie’s ass, but only so he could pull back far enough to grab Eddie’s hips and start to turn him over. Getting the hint, Eddie rolled over onto his stomach and got up on his hands and knees, giving Richie better access.

Richie grabbed up the bottle of lube and squirted some onto his fingers; Eddie had already stretched himself out quite a bit, but Richie had bigger fingers, and an even bigger cock, and when he started right off by sliding two fingers inside, Eddie let out a long whine and dropped down onto his elbows, face pressed into the pillow underneath him.

“Oh, Richie…” Eddie couldn’t help but rock backwards as Richie continued to finger him.

The way that Richie fingered him was nothing short of masterful, almost artistic. His fingers were so big and long, so strong, and yet so delicate. When Eddie had been with previous lovers, they’d obviously fingered him before penetration, but it had always felt like they were just performing a task. Like it was just a necessary step, a duty that needed to be performed before they got to the actual intercourse. With Richie, the fingering was its own experience. It was almost better than the sex itself.

Well, not really. Absolutely nothing could compare to having Richie’s cock in him. But the fingering was pretty great too.

Once Eddie was sufficiently stretched out, Richie pulled his fingers slowly back out of him, looking around him on the bed for a condom. He would have thought Eddie would have grabbed one when he got the lube out, but he didn’t see it anywhere.

Figuring it must have just fallen off the bed or something, Richie reached over Eddie to open the top drawer of the nightstand, digging for the box of condoms he knew was in there, but to his surprise he felt Eddie grab onto his forearm, stilling his movements.

Richie looked at him questioningly, an eyebrow raised.

“Uh, do you remember how I had us both get tested, right when we first got together?”

Eddie looked strangely nervous; he was looking down at the mattress below him, avoiding eye contact with Richie.

Richie nodded, but since Eddie still wasn’t looking at him, he added a “Yes”.

It had been important to Eddie that they both get tested at the beginning of their relationship. They’d both had previous partners right before (plus Richie’s partner had turned out to be sleeping around), so they wanted to be safe. About a month after the night they got together, they’d taken a trip down to the clinic, and both of their tests had thankfully come back clean.

Eddie turned his body around so he was facing Richie, but was still weirdly avoiding eye contact and chewing his lips nervously. Richie just waited patiently, hand still in the nightstand drawer.

“Right. So, um, we got tested, and we’re both clean.”

Eddie had finally raised his head to make eye contact with Richie, so Richie just nodded in response this time.

“And, uh, we’re not seeing anybody else.”

Richie nodded again, this time vigorously.

They were exclusive; they’d established that early on. Richie had no interest in having a relationship that wasn’t exclusive, but especially not with Eddie. Now that he finally had Eddie, Richie had absolutely no desire to be with anybody else. Not now, not ever.

Nor did he have any interest in sharing Eddie with anybody else.

“So, I guess…” Eddie trailed off, once again averting his gaze. 

Seeing Eddie this nervous was making Richie nervous as well, and he could feel anxiety starting to pool in the pit of his stomach, but he placed a comforting hand on Eddie’s knee, trying to give him the encouragement to continue.

Eddie looked down at Richie’s large, strong hand splayed out over his knee, then finally looked up, allowing his eyes to meet Richie’s.

“Well, it’s just, we don’t really need to use a condom anymore, do we? I mean, we’re both clean, we’re monogamous…”

He’d trailed off again. Richie’s complete lack of response was making him question everything, and he quickly started to backtrack.

“I mean, unless you want to,” he added quickly. “It’s totally fine if you want to keep using them.”

Richie’s brain finally processed what Eddie was saying, and he squeezed Eddie’s knee firmly.

“No, no,” Richie said quickly, trying to keep his voice level to hide his eagerness. “I mean yeah, I mean no.”

He trailed his hand up Eddie’s thigh to wrap around his hip.

“As long as you’re sure,” he added, face serious.

Eddie smiled up at him brightly, nodding his response.

Richie smiled back at him, finally pulling his hand out of the drawer and closing it. It somehow seemed to make a different sound than it usually did, closing with a definitive snap that echoed throughout the room.

Richie turned back to Eddie, feeling himself shaking slightly, but Eddie seemed to be shaking as well. Richie could see his thighs tremble as he spread his legs again and settled down on the pillows.

Richie moved back between his legs, never breaking eye contact with Eddie. The air in the room felt heavy and thick; weighed down with what they were about to do. There was a fizzle of excitement between them, but they also both knew that this was a big step in their relationship, so there were plenty of nerves as well.

The silence was broken by the opening of the cap on the lube bottle as Richie squirted lube onto his hand to slick up his bare cock. He used his free hand to lift up one of Eddie’s legs as he lined himself up, shivering at the feeling of the tip of his cock brushing against Eddie’s hole with absolutely nothing separating them.

He paused before pushing in, feeling the need for a final confirmation.

“You’re sure?” Richie inquired, searching Eddie’s face for even the slightest trace of discomfort or hesitation. “You’re sure this is okay? I can still put one on, it’s not too late.”

Eddie smiled up at him adoringly, a warm feeling in his stomach. Most guys would jump at the opportunity to have sex without a condom and never look back, but Richie was a different kind of guy. He was so sweet and caring. Of course he loved sex, they both did, but more than that he loved Eddie. Eddie meant everything to him, and making sure Eddie felt safe and comfortable was always his number one priority in their relationship, both in and out of the bedroom.

“I’m sure. I’ve thought about it… a lot. And I want to do this. I want to feel you inside me.  _ Really _ feel you.”

Richie couldn’t help the shiver that wracked his body at the way those simple words affected him. He was aware of the amount of trust it required for both of them to do this, and that was not something that he took lightly. A part of him almost felt like crying, but he fought it off, not wanting to kill the mood. 

“Okay baby. You ready?”

Eddie nodded again, smiling as he stroked a finger delicately up and down Richie’s arm.

Richie smiled back down at him and pushed Eddie’s knee up into his chest as he lined himself back up at Eddie’s hole. He pushed in slowly, and Eddie bit his lip.

Richie was big, and it always hurt just a little bit when he first entered him, no matter how much Eddie had been lubed up and stretched out. Eddie usually tried to hide that he was in pain, because he didn’t want to upset Richie, and because he always knew it would give way to pleasure soon.

There was also a small part of him that kind of liked the pain, but he tried not to dwell too much on that.

Richie fell forward as he continued to push into Eddie, catching himself by planting his palm flat on the mattress next to Eddie’s head, his other hand still wrapped around Eddie’s knee where he was holding it firmly up against his chest. He hovered above Eddie, gazing down into Eddie’s big brown eyes, both unblinking as Richie pushed in the final inch, now completely inside of Eddie. They remained like that for a long moment, both breathing heavily, looking deeply into each other’s eyes, just basking in the moment, in the feeling. Richie was completely inside of him, with absolutely nothing separating them. It was by far the most intimate thing either of them had ever experienced. They both felt the bond between them growing stronger in that moment; they could feel the shift in their relationship.

Richie slowly began to move, building up a steady pace as he thrust in and out of Eddie. He shifted slightly to raise up Eddie’s other leg, folding them both up to his chest, but never once tearing his eyes away from Eddie’s. It felt important to not break eye contact; they had to ground themselves somehow, they had to stay connected to prevent the sensations from becoming too overwhelming.

As it was, it was just teetering on the brink of being too much. It was just so fucking incredible, it was almost otherwordly. It wasn’t even so much that the sensation was drastically different without a condom, it was more just the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing between them, that they were making love without any kind of barrier separating them.

Every time it felt like it was almost overwhelming, Richie would refocus on Eddie’s eyes. Just looking into those gorgeous eyes, he would remember why this mattered, why this was so important. This wasn’t just about having better sex, or not having to worry about condoms anymore. This was about trust. 

“Richie,” Eddie gasped out breathlessly, bringing his hands up to tangle in Richie’s dark curls. “Richie, I’m getting close.”

“Me too, baby. Me too.”

Eddie pulled Richie down by his hair to capture his lips in a searing kiss, shifting his hips down to meet Richie on his thrusts.

“Fuck,” Richie moaned against his lips. “Fuck, I’m really fucking close. Do you… ugh… like, where do you want me to…”

_ Inside me _ , the voice in Eddie’s head responded.  _ Come inside me, fill me up with your cum, I want to feel it deep inside me, I want to feel it dripping out of me. _

Eddie could feel his face burn at the thoughts inside his own head, but he also felt himself shake with desire at the idea. Could he say it? Would Richie think it was weird? Was it too much? Would it kill the mood?

“Eddie,” Richie grunted out. His thrusts were getting sloppy and erratic, indicating that he was right on the edge of coming. Eddie had to make a decision.

“On me,” he finally whispered, setting for what he considered to be an excellent consolation prize. “Come on me baby.”

At that, Richie swiftly pulled out of him, just barely having the time to shift over top of him before he was coming hard, painting Eddie’s stomach and chest.

The feeling of Richie’s hot cum on his skin pushed Eddie immediately over the edge as well. The thought of “ _ Jesus, am I a fucking cumslut? _ ” briefly danced across his mind before it went completely blank as his orgasm washed over him, making his entire body shake as he came all over himself, streaks of cum mixing with Richie’s on his skin.

They both gasped for breath as they came down, still looking deep into each other’s eyes. Once his heart rate had evened out, Richie leaned down to give Eddie a kiss that was deep and passionate, but still tender.

“Eddie,” he whispered softly. “I love you. I love you so much.”

Eddie smiled up at him and grabbed hold of Richie’s hand. He raised it slowly up to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to the palm, making Richie absolutely melt.

“I love you too, Richie.”

They smiled at each other lovingly, basking in the afterglow. The moment was only broken when Eddie slid his hand down to Richie’s wrist and raised it up to the side of Richie’s face, pulling back slightly and then quickly forward, slapping Richie in the face with his own hand.

“Now go get me a towel,” he ordered.

Richie chuckled as he climbed off of Eddie.

“So bossy,” he mumbled loudly to himself as he made his way to the bathroom, making sure to speak loudly so Eddie could hear him.

He returned a moment later with a washcloth he’d dampened with warm water and he used it to gently wipe down Eddie’s chest and stomach. 

Eddie hummed softly at the feeling. He loved when Richie would help to clean him up after sex like this. It made him feel so loved and taken care of, which was a feeling he didn’t even know he’d craved before Richie. He’d always been fiercely independent, sometimes to a fault, and hated anything that made him feel infantilized. But with Richie, it felt so nice to just relax and let him take charge. He didn’t know why, but with Richie he was okay with things that he never would have been comfortable with with a previous lover.

Richie finished cleaning Eddie off and tossed the washcloth into their hamper before climbing back into bed and pulling Eddie close to his chest, pressing a soft kiss to the top of his head.

“Richie, that was fucking incredible,” Eddie peered up at Richie from his chest.

“Yeah,” Richie gazed down at him adoringly before burying his face in his hair and inhaling. “Yeah, it really was.”

He pressed lazy kisses to the top of Eddie’s head as Eddie stroked delicate fingers across his chest, swirling through the dark hair.

“Takeout tonight?” he murmured into the top of Eddie’s head.

“Takeout,” Eddie agreed, smiling into his chest.

-

Eddie jolted abruptly awake, shooting straight up in bed, chest heaving as he gasped for breath. He blinked furiously, trying to make out images or even shapes, but the room was pitch black. A powerful shiver wracked his body, and he raised a hand up to push back his hair, which was damp with cold sweat. He felt a tear escape one of his eyes and roll down his cheek as he struggled to control his breathing.

He didn’t know where he was, or what was happening. He felt lost and bewildered, and he could feel himself start to hyperventilate as his panic increased, until he suddenly felt a pair of big, strong arms wrap around him and pull him up against a solid chest.

“Hey, Eddie,” Richie’s voice rang through the darkness, soft and soothing. “Eddie, baby, hey it’s okay. I’m here. It’s okay.”

_ Richie _ .

Eddie turned towards him and flung himself into Richie’s arms, burying his face in his chest as sobs began to overtake him. Richie held him close, rubbing a hand up and down Eddie’s back soothingly.

“It’s okay baby. Everything is okay. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

Eddie drew in a shaky breath, trying to ground himself. He tried to focus on the feeling of Richie holding him, the sturdy arms encircling his body, the hand moving up and down his back.

“Did you have a nightmare?” Richie asked softly.

Eddie only nodded in response, swallowing down another wave of tears.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Eddie shook his head before burying his face back in Richie’s chest.

“Can you just hold me?” he choked out.

“Of course, baby.”

Richie tightened his grip around Eddie’s small, trembling body, using one hand to rub up and down his back in long, soothing strokes, and running the other hand gently through his hair. With time, Eddie’s tears subsided and his breathing slowed down, and eventually he drifted off to sleep, held tightly in Richie’s arms.

Richie couldn’t help but smile a bit as he nuzzled his cheek down into Eddie’s soft hair.

It felt a bit wrong, being happy at all when Eddie had just been hurting so much, but all Richie had ever wanted was this. 

He’d known about Eddie’s nightmares for years, long before they were dating. Back when they were just roommates, he would sometimes hear Eddie wake up crying in the room next to his, and whenever it happened, he’d wanted nothing more than to run in there and hold him and kiss him until he fell back asleep. But because they were just friends, he had to just stay in his own bed and listen to Eddie either cry himself back to sleep, or be comforted by his boyfriend at the time, Steve.

And now that he was here, he couldn’t help but feel his heart swell with happiness, even as Eddie’s tears were still drying on his cheeks.

All he’d wanted was to be the one to hold Eddie when he was hurting, to be the one who could make everything better for him. As much as he wished he could make the nightmares go away for good, until that day came, he was going to be there for Eddie, every day, and every night, as long as Eddie would have him.

-

Richie awoke abruptly to the sound of rhythmic beeping, shaking his head in confusion. He hadn’t set an alarm last night and neither had Eddie; they both had the day off and were looking forward to sleeping in. It took a moment for his groggy brain to recognize the tune as the ringtone on his new cell phone.

“Shit,” Richie raised a hand up to his face and dragged it across his eyes, trying to rub the sleep out of them.

“Will you shut that fucking alarm off?” Eddie grumbled from where he was lying next to him.

“It’s not an alarm, it’s the ringtone on my new phone, remember?”

“I don’t care if it’s a carbon monoxide detector and I’m about to asphyxiate, just fucking shut it off, I’m trying to sleep.”

Richie crawled out of bed and dragged his way over to the dresser, snatching his phone off the top of it and leaving the room, closing the door behind him. He started to make his way down the stairs, invisible strings pulling his sleepy body towards the kitchen, specifically the coffee pot.

Richie frowned down at the number displayed on his phone. He vaguely recognized it, but he didn’t have it saved under a name in his new phone, meaning he had probably had it in his old phone and hadn’t thought it was worth transferring.

After a moment of consideration, Richie hit the button to answer the call.

“Richie Tozier, at your service,” he held the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he got the coffee out of the cupboard.

“ _ Richie _ ,” the voice on the other end was breathless, and a bit strained, but Richie would still recognize it anywhere. The phone slid from his shoulder, and he scrambled to catch it and hold it back up against his ear.

“Jake?” Richie hated the way his voice shook slightly.

“I’m so glad you answered. I was afraid maybe you changed numbers.”

“Uhhh… no. Same number. New phone, but same number.”

Richie was frozen in place in the kitchen. He was staring at the coffee pot but not really seeing it.

“Look… can we meet up? Go somewhere and talk? Just us?” 

“I… uh… I....” Richie stammered a bit, trying to find words, but only able to make vague noises.

“Do you remember that coffeeshop by UC, the one we would go to when we would meet up after my Psychology class on Wednesdays?”

“Common Grounds?” Richie filled in, finally finding his voice.

“Yeah, that one. Can you meet me there? Let’s say... in an hour?”

Richie bit his lip. He pressed the phone firmly against his ear, blinking at the label on the coffee pot in front of him.

Every single instinct in his body told him that this was a bad idea. He couldn’t imagine anything good ever coming from meeting up with an ex.

But at the same time, there was something in Jake’s voice that was tugging at him. He sounded… off. Distressed. He could be in trouble.

“Okay,” he finally responded. “Okay, I’ll be there.”

“ _ Great _ ,” Jake said breathlessly. “I’ll see you there."

Jake hung up, and there was silence on the other end of the phone, but Richie still held it up to his ear for an unnaturally long time before he finally lowered his arm, holding the phone in front of him and staring at it as though he’d never seen a phone before in his life. He almost felt tempted to scroll through his call list to confirm that the call had actually happened and he hadn’t just imagined the whole thing.

He turned slowly around and made his way back up to the bedroom, each stair creaking beneath his feet.

Eddie was awake when he came back into the bedroom, sitting up in bed on his laptop. Richie closed the door behind him, but didn’t move further into the room. He stood by the dresser, listening to the clicking sounds of Eddie typing on his keyboard.

Eventually Eddie glanced up at him.

“Were you gonna just eat that with a spoon or something?”

Richie looked down at his hand to see that he was still holding the can of coffee grounds, gripped tightly in his palm. He’d carried it up with him from the kitchen.

He shook his head sharply.

“Uh, I don’t know, I guess,” he laughed humorlessly, placing both the can of coffee and his cell phone on the dresser.

“Maybe that’s what happens when you take early morning phone calls. It absorbs your limited brain function,” Eddie fired back, still clicking away on his laptop. “Who was it, anyway?”

“What?”

“On the phone. Who called?”

Richie felt his heart leap up into his throat. His mind worked in overdrive, but before his mouth could keep up, Eddie spoke again.

“Was it Charlie?”

“Yeah,” Richie responded automatically. “Yeah, it was Charlie.”

It was a knee jerk response to the question, but once the flood gates were open, words just started tumbling out of Richie’s mouth uncontrollably.

“He wants me to come down to the club in an hour. He said he wants to talk about some stuff for Friday. You know, since he’s just starting this cabaret night and it’s new and it’s my first time hosting, he wants to do some prep and iron out some details. Make sure everything is gonna run smoothly for everyone.”

Eddie nodded slightly, still not looking up from his computer.

Richie remained at the door, heart hammering, his entire body stiff as a board. He was absolutely rigid with anticipation. Surely Eddie was going to call him out on the lie, or he was just going to spontaneously blurt out the truth. Something was going to happen to correct this indiscretion.

But when Eddie finally looked up at him over the top of his laptop, it was only to raise a questioning eyebrow at him.

“You should probably get ready babe. If you’re supposed to be there in an hour, you need to leave soon.”

“Yeah,” Richie squeaked out breathlessly. “Yeah, I guess I should.”

He sprung into motion, pulling clothes out of the closet and dressing quickly. The silence in the room felt heavy and pregnant, and the sounds of Eddie typing were like a hammer on a nail.

Surely Eddie had to feel the tension coming from him. He just had to. Eddie knew him better than anybody. He had to know something was off, something was wrong. He was going to call Richie out on his behavior, Richie just knew it. 

Sure enough, once he was dressed and ready to go, Eddie snapped the laptop closed and hopped off the bed, walking up to face Richie.

“I know you’re nervous babe,” Eddie reached up to cup Richie’s face in his hands, and Richie fought the urge to avert his gaze. “I know this is big. This job is a big deal. But Richie, you’re going to be amazing. I know you are. Even if you’re not, even if you fuck the whole thing up and have to quit the business in disgrace, I’m still going to love you.”

He stood up on his tiptoes to press a kiss to Richie’s lips, then pulled away with a smile before hopping back into bed and reopening his laptop.

Richie remained where he was, frozen, as Eddie went back to typing away. He was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. He wasn’t just going to leave like this. He wasn’t going to just walk out the door and meet up with his ex while his boyfriend thought he was having a work meeting. There was no way this was happening.

“Oh babe, can you grab a bottle of wine on your way home? I was thinking we could make that pasta sauce tonight; you got all the ingredients for it yesterday, and it would pair well with a nice merlot or something.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can do that,” Richie answered wistfully.

He stood for another moment, watching Eddie on his computer, and then his legs carried him out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house.

He barely even heard the “Goodbye babe, I love you” that Eddie called after him.

-

Richie arrived at the coffee shop early, but spent a good twenty minutes of time down the street, just standing on the corner, leaning up against a building. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to talk himself into doing this or out of doing this, but eventually he pushed off the building and walked up to the storefront.

He saw Jake immediately when he walked in, sitting in the corner by himself, two steaming mugs of coffee in front of him. 

The sight of Jake made Richie hesitate once again, and he briefly considered the option of just turning around and walking right back out the door. He could just leave, grab a bottle of Merlot from the store, and go back home to cook dinner with his boyfriend.

But before he could decide one way or the other, Jake looked up and their eyes met.

Jake smiled brightly at the sight of him, and he hopped up from his seat as Richie walked to him.

“Hey, Rich,” Jake stepped in and wrapped his arms around Richie in a hug, immediately melting into him.

Richie hesitated before tentatively wrapping his arms around Jake to hug him back.

“Hey.”

They parted after a moment and sat down across from each other, and Richie took the opportunity to really take Jake in.

He looked… tired. Really, really tired. There were dark circles under his eyes, the likes of which Richie hadn’t seen on him before, even when he was cramming for finals. He also looked thin. He’d always been slender, but he looked like he’d lost weight in the year since Richie had last seen him.

Something about the way he looked stirred something inside of Richie. It made him want to help. It made him want to protect him somehow.

“I got you a coffee,” Jake smiled at him from across the table. “Plain black. Is that still how you take it?”

“Um,” Richie swallowed hard. “Yeah. Yeah it is.”

He snatched up the mug of coffee in front of him and took a long drink from it, even though it was scalding. He almost didn’t notice the burning; he felt a bit numb, like he was moving through a dream.

Jake picked up his own own mug and took a sip from it as well, still looking at Richie over the rim.

It was probably a vanilla latte. Those were his favorite, and he especially loved the way they made them here. He would get one every time they came to this cafe. Sometimes even more than one. Richie had tried a sip once and hadn’t cared for it. He preferred a strong coffee drink, and he liked to be able to taste the coffee, not just cream or sugar or whatever flavoring was in it.

_ Jesus _ , Richie thought to himself as he ran a thumb along the rim of his mug.  _ Even my fucking thoughts are a mess right now. _

He looked up at Jake, who was still sipping his latte happily, seeming to enjoy the decadent beverage. 

“Vanilla latte?” Richie finally asked, when the silence had grown to be too much for him.

“Yeah,” Jake asked, smiling as he set down the mug. “You remembered what coffee I like.”

“So did you,” Richie deflected quickly, indicating to the mug of coffee in front of him, and Jake snorted out a laugh.

“You like black coffee. It’s not really that hard to remember.”

Richie chuckled earnestly in response. 

“It’s really nice to see you,” Jake said softly, looking shyly up at Richie through his thick, dark eyelashes.

“Yeah, uh,” Richie rubbed the back of his neck out of nervous habit. “It’s nice to see you too. How… how are you?”

Jake exhaled softly, his shoulders hunching forward slightly.

“Not… not super great. I mean, I graduated, and that was great, but it’s a tough job market right now, ya know? I’m still working part-time at the bookstore at UC, but the pay is still crap, and of course it’s kind of a dead-end job. I did get an apartment in Boystown right after graduation, but uh… my parents stopped sending me money a few months back, we kind of had a bit of a falling out, my Dad wanted me to move back home and work for his company, but the idea of moving back to Missouri was just…” he closed his eyes and shook his head sharply. “Yeah… and obviously I couldn’t afford the rent anymore with just my bookstore salary, so I had to move out. As of right now I’m living on Dean and Rachel’s couch. Do you remember them?”

Richie nodded in response. Dean and Rachel were school friends of Jake and Richie had met them a few times back when he and Jake were dating. Jake had even brought them to some of Richie’s shows during the course of their brief relationship.

“Yeah. How are they? They’re still together?”

“Yeah, they are. They’re doing pretty well. Rachel still has another year left at UC, but Dean managed to get a pretty good job right after he graduated, so they got their own apartment. It’s really not that bad. They’ve got a nice place, and their couch is actually pretty comfy. And of course it’s temporary, it’s just until I can get a real job and get back on my feet. The only problem is… uh, they’re still friends with Max, so he’s over there sometimes. I’m uh… I’m sure you remember him.”

Richie nodded in response, but Jake had averted his gaze as soon as he’d brought up Max, seemingly embarrassed to look Richie in the eye.

“Yeah, I definitely do remember him.”

The memories flooded back into Richie’s mind in a wave. Going to Jake’s dorm and walking in on him and Max together. His and Jake’s altercation in the stairwell that had concluded their relationship. The next night, running into both Jake and Max at that restaurant with all of his friends.

And of course, Bev punching Max square in the face.

Richie couldn’t help but huff out a small laugh as he remembered that particular detail, and Jake looked up at him with a tentative half-smile.

“Yeah, well, needless to say, things have been pretty tense between Max and I ever since that night at the restaurant,” Jake let out an obviously forced laugh as he wrapped both hands around his mug and looked down at the liquid in it. “I’m sure you can imagine.”

“Oh, are you guys not together anymore?”

Jake’s head shot up.

“We were never together, Richie,” Jake said quickly, leaning forward slightly. “It was just a hookup.”

There was a moment of silence as they both looked at each other across the table before Jake continued, voice slightly lower.

“A very, very stupid, mistake of a hookup.”

There was another long moment of silence as Jake looked deeply into Richie’s eyes and Richie stared back, slightly uncomfortable, but still unable to break eye contact, until Jake finally looked back down at his coffee.

“I, uh, I made a lot of mistakes back then.”

Jake took another drink of his latte, and Richie stared down at the black coffee in his own cup, chewing thoroughly on his bottom lip.

“Anyway,” Jake eventually continued, leaning back in his chair. “I think that’s enough of the Jake Pity Parade. How are you? How have you been since… uh… everything?”

Richie bit his lip again, wondering how he should answer. He almost didn’t want to talk about how well his life was going when Jake was clearly struggling so much, but Jake was looking at him expectantly so he tentatively began.

“I’m… uh… I’m doing really well, actually. Do you… do you remember The Idiot Box? That one comedy club downtown? I did a couple shows there that you came to.”

Jake nodded.

“Well, um, I’d started doing fairly regular performances there, I’ve been doing my standup every week there for a while, and now they’re starting this cabaret night, kind of like a variety show every Friday night with different comedians in the Chicago area. And, uh, I just got offered the position to host it. So I’ll be opening and closing every show, doing bits in between performers, acting in some of the sketches, maybe even a little improv…”

Richie trailed off as Jake absolutely beamed at him, sitting up straight in his chair.

“That’s  _ amazing _ , Richie,” Jake gushed. “I’m so happy for you. I know how hard you’ve worked for this, and you really deserve it. Maybe I can come to one of your shows. I mean, I can’t exactly afford a ticket right now, but you get a free guest ticket if you’re performing, right?”

“Uh, well, no…” Richie looked off to the side nervously as Jake’s face fell slightly.

“Oh, do they not do that anymore?”

“Uh, no... well, I mean, yeah... yeah they do, but, um, I… I need it for Eddie.”

“Oh, of course,” Jake still looked disappointed, but the corner of his mouth turned up slightly in understanding. “I mean, he’s your best friend. Of course you want him to be there.”

“Well, no,” Richie bit his lip, wondering why this felt so hard to say, why he couldn’t seem to look Jake in the eye. “We’re, uh... we’re actually more than just friends now.”

Richie looked up from his coffee to see Jake’s face frozen in a look of… shock? Disbelief? Hurt? Richie couldn’t quite tell.

“Oh,” Jake finally responded after a moment, still staring at Richie, unblinking.

Richie looked nervously away for a second, but when he looked back, Jake was still staring at him, expression unchanged.

“So, uh… it’s… like… it’s serious?”

Richie nodded automatically in response.

“Yeah, it’s serious. He’s… he’s my boyfriend.”

There was another beat of silence as they stared each other down across the table. At some point it had started to rain outside, and the only sounds to be heard were the pattering on the sidewalk and the soft cafe music playing in the background.

“I’m actually…” Richie began, swallowed hard, and then continued. “I was actually planning on asking him to marry me soon. I mean, we already live together, so I guess that’s the next step: the big proposal. I was just waiting until I got a more steady job, which, now I guess I have, so I suppose it’s time to stop shuffling my feet and buy a ring.”

Richie forced out a small laugh and took another sip of coffee, still watching Jake.

Jake didn’t say anything. He didn’t move, didn’t change expression in the slightest. He just kept looking at Richie, his face a mask, but it was easy to see that his eyes were starting to fill up with tears.

Richie’s heart sunk. Jake was trying to hold himself together, he could tell, but a lone tear escaped and rolled down his cheek.

“Jake…”

“No,” when he finally spoke, his voice was cracked and strangled. “No, I… I mean, I’m happy for you. Really.”

He reached up to wipe the tear away from his cheek and sniffled slightly as he tried and failed to pull himself together. Richie only watched him from across the table, completely at a loss for what to say or do.

“I’m happy for him too,” Jake continued, voice still strained. “He’s… he’s really lucky. You’re a good guy, Richie. Maybe… maybe the best.”

It occurred to Richie that he’d never seen Jake cry before.

Jake had always kind of looked like Eddie. If Richie was honest with himself, it was definitely what had made him attracted to Jake in the first place. But he never looked like Eddie more than when he was crying.

It was probably what possessed Richie to reach over and place a large, comforting hand over Jake’s small one where it was resting on the table.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, searching Jake’s face, but Jake was just looking down at their hands on the table.

Jake snorted slightly, still looking at Richie’s hand covering his own.

“You’re sorry? Now what in the hell do you have to apologize to me for?”

“I… I really don’t know.”

“ _ I’m _ sorry,” Jake said quietly. “Really. For everything.”

Jake looked up to meet his gaze, big brown eyes still glassy with tears. He slowly started to turn his hand over underneath Richie’s.

“I’ve…” he said softly, barely more than a whisper. “I’ve missed you.”

He turned his hand over all the way so that their palms were touching, and his delicate fingers curled upwards, ghosting over Richie’s wrist.

Richie pulled his hand away like he’d been burned.

“Jake…”

“No, no, no, I understand,” Jake picked his hand up off the table to wipe away his tears, shaking his head sharply and looking away from Richie. “You’re with Eddie now, and you’re happy, and I don’t wanna get between you two, I really don’t.”

He sniffed hard and looked back at Richie.

“I just… I had to see you again. I had to at least try. You were… you were amazing, Richie. You were… a perfect boyfriend, really,” he choked out a wet laugh as another wave of tears came over him.

“And I… I fucked up. I really, really did,” he set his elbows on the table and let his face fall into his hands as a sob wracked his body, and Richie shifted uncomfortably in his seat, chancing a glance around the cafe to see if anybody had noticed the soap opera that was unfolding at their table.

“I still think about that one day,” Jake continued, pulling his face out of his hands but still staring down at the table. “That day you showed up at my dorm and walked in on… well I still think about how you’d come there to help me study. How you made all those flashcards for me, and for a subject you didn’t even know anything about. Jesus, that must have taken all night.”

“It did, actually,” Richie answered dryly, and Jake gave him an apologetic look through his teary eyes.

“I just think sometimes,” he swallowed hard and sniffled again. “About how you… how you did that for  _ me _ .”

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if he were trying to find the right words, or maybe trying to find the courage to say them. Richie just watched and waited, patiently, cradling his mug of now lukewarm coffee.

“I shouldn’t have taken you for granted,” Jake finally said, choking out the words through a fresh wave of tears, but looking Richie dead in the eye as he spoke. “I should have treated you better. And… I hope… I hope Eddie is good to you, Richie. I really do. Because you deserve it. You deserve a good guy, someone’s who’s as good as you are. You deserve someone who treats you well. Someone who makes you happy.”

At that, Jake heaved a massive sigh, reaching up once again to wipe the tears away from his cheeks. Richie watched as he pushed his chair back and stood up, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out his wallet.

“Let me get it,” Richie jumped in quickly, but Jake only shook his head and pulled a few dollar bills from his wallet before folding it back up and putting it back in his pocket.

“No. Believe me, I don’t want any pity. That’s not what this was about. You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

“Are you…” Richie felt his stomach twist painfully with an emotion he couldn’t quite describe as he watched Jake push his chair back in. “Will you be okay?”

Jake huffed out a wet laugh, throwing his head back and looking up at the ceiling.

“Yeah… yeah, I’ll be okay.”

He brought his head down to look at Richie, and for a moment their eyes met. Richie looked deep into Jake’s glassy eyes and took in his flushed and tear-streaked cheeks. He wanted to do something, but he had no idea what.

They stayed like that for a long moment, Jake standing at the table, sniffling slightly, staring down at him, Richie still seated, squeezing his mug tightly, looking up at Jake.

Abruptly, Jake moved. He took one step forward, into Richie’s space.

In a single, fluid motion, Jake reached up with one hand to cup Richie’s cheek, tilting his head upward slightly, and simultaneously bent down, pressing his lips firmly against Richie’s.

It was quick, and chaste, and before Richie could even register what was happening it was over and Jake was pulling away, straightening back up to look down at Richie, whose mouth was now hanging open dumbly out of shock.

“Bye, Richie.”

And just like that he was gone. He walked swiftly out of the coffee shop and immediately disappeared into the now-pouring rain, leaving Richie alone at the table, in a trance, completely frozen in time.

-

Eddie was in the process of emptying the laundry hamper into the washing machine down by their kitchen and humming softly to himself when he heard the noise again.

It was the same sound as before, the unmistakable, obnoxious tune that had jolted him out of his sleep that morning. Leave it to Richie to get a phone with the most annoying ringtone on the planet.

Eddie huffed with annoyance as he turned on the washer and made his way back up the stairs, carrying the empty laundry bin with him.

Richie’s phone was sitting on the dresser, right where he’d set it after his phone call this morning, right where he’d obviously forgotten it. It wasn’t a big surprise to Eddie that Richie had forgotten his phone, he’d seemed like quite the nervous wreck this morning when he was getting ready to leave.

Eddie had also found that unsurprising. Richie had a lot of issues with anxiety, particularly when it came to his work and his career. He’d wanted this job so bad he’d hardly been able to sleep for the last week. Of course it was amazing that he’d gotten it, but that wasn’t just gonna make all the nerves just go away. This was a huge step in his career, and of course he was going to be nervous, especially before the first show.

The ringtone mercifully cut out right as Eddie was entering the room, and Eddie settled back onto the bed with his laptop, only to be startled when Richie’s phone abruptly began ringing again.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Eddie grumbled to himself, climbing back off the bed. Richie may love that ringtone, but that didn’t mean he had to listen to it when Richie wasn’t here. He could shut the phone off until Richie got home from his meeting.

He snatched the phone off the dresser, searching for the ‘Power off’ button, when suddenly the name displayed on the screen caught his attention.

Charlie.

Eddie looked down at the ringing phone, brow furrowed in confusion.

Why the hell was Charlie calling Richie’s cell phone when Richie was already in a meeting with him right now?

Without even thinking, Eddie instinctively hit the button to answer the call, raising the phone up to his ear.

“Richie’s phone, Eddie speaking.”

“Eddie!” he recognized Charlie’s chipper voice on the other end of the line. “I’m sure you’ve heard the fantastic news, your boyfriend is going to be joining our team here for this new little shindig we’re trying out.”

Eddie made a noise of affirmation. His head was spinning with confusion.

“Listen, I just wanted to tell Richie, we need him to come a bit early on Friday before the show, just to get ready for everything. Could you tell him to come at 5 instead of 6 like he usually does?”

Eddie opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no words came out

“Eddie? You still there? Did I lose ya?”

“Yeah,” Eddie finally answered, more an exhale than a word. “Yeah, I can tell him.”

His chest felt tight. His head was foggy. His stomach felt like it had dropped to the floor. 

“You, uh,” Eddie added quickly. “You don’t need to see him today? You don’t need him to come in for a meeting or something?”

Surely, this must be some sort of misunderstanding.

“What? No,” Charlie answered quickly, sounding confused. “No, I’m not even in Chicago today. Just tell him to come at 5 on Friday, okay?”

Eddie must have mumbled something that sounded like acknowledgement, because Charlie thanked him and the line went dead.

Eddie stood in place, still holding the phone up to his ear. The apartment was quiet, so quiet he could hear the sounds of the washing machine whirring all the way downstairs.

He blinked furiously, trying to force his mind into overdrive to  _ think _ , to think of any kind of explanation for this. He replayed the interaction he’d had with Richie earlier, trying to find some sort of loophole, some minor part of the interaction that would lead him to believe he’d misunderstood, that Richie hadn’t…

But he had, and as much as Eddie tried to push the thought out of his mind, it kept forcing its way back in.

Richie had lied to him.

And once he allowed that thought in, it came in to stay. It made a home in his mind, shouting at the top of its lungs, over and over and over again.

Richie lied, Richie lied, Richie  _ lied _ .

  
  
  



	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I talked it over with my proofreaders and I decided to spit the final chapter into 2 parts because it just made sense that way. The whole thing is done though, so I'm gonna post the first part now and then just post the last part tomorrow.

Richie walked home in the rain.

It would have been so much quicker and easier to take the train, but he was oddly comforted by the feeling of the rain on his skin. It was both a harsh jolt back into reality and a soothing coolness on his body; he’d felt like he was on fire since he left that cafe.

He kept replaying the last hour in his mind, going through it scene by scene like a film student studying a Hitchcock movie. He thought about every little thing Jake said and did, but mostly about every little thing  _ he  _ said and did, agonizing over every action he’d made, wondering if each and every choice was the right one.

He kept getting stuck on the first moment, right when he’d walked in the door and saw Jake sitting there. There had been a period of time, brief as it was, when Jake hadn’t noticed him.

He should have just turned around and walked back out the door.

He should have just said no when Jake asked to meet in the first place.

He should have just not answered his fucking phone at all.

Richie kicked a rock bitterly and it landed in the gutter with a splash.

He was so distracted and lost in his own head he almost forgot that Eddie had asked him to pick up a bottle of wine and he ended up having to backtrack to the store.

Eddie.

Oh Jesus, Eddie.

He was already trying to prepare himself for going home. He was trying to train himself to act normal, but he wasn’t even sure what normal was anymore. How was he supposed to just walk in the door, kiss Eddie, and start making dinner, without acting like he’d just had one of the weirdest and most uncomfortable interactions of his entire life?

He wished he could talk to Eddie about it. That’s really what would help to make everything better. Talking to Eddie always made things better. Eddie had always been able to help Richie unravel his thoughts and make sense of them. He’d talked Richie down from the edge more times than he could count.

But Eddie thought he’d spent the last hour at a work meeting. He couldn’t exactly walk in and start talking about how he’d had a weird interaction with his ex-boyfriend. At least not without having a  _ lot  _ of explaining to do.

Explaining that Richie frankly couldn’t quite handle right now. He couldn’t even explain the last hour to himself, let alone to his boyfriend.

He heaved a massive sigh as he made his way back down his street and started up the stairs to his apartment, bottle of wine in hand, trying to force his face into a neutral expression. What he really wanted was to just put this all behind him. He wanted to leave that bizarre coffee date with his ex firmly in his past, go home to his boyfriend, and enjoy the evening together.

He just hoped he’d be able to.

He opened the door to the same smell of vanilla and cinnamon, but it didn’t seem as relaxing as it did before. His stomach was still twisted up, his chest still tight. Anxiety was pulsing through his body, pumping through his blood, which was a feeling he was not unaccustomed to, but there was something else there as well.

Guilt.

And that was what was really destroying him, if he was being honest with himself. That little seed of guilt was firmly planted in his mind, and it was already growing inside him like a weed.

“Eddie?” he called into the house as he automatically took off his coat and shoes, shaking the rain off of his jacket in the foyer.

“I’m up here,” Eddie called from the bedroom.

Richie set the bottle of wine on the counter in the kitchen before starting up the stairs and towards the bedroom. He was still distressed, but now that he was actually back home, more than anything he just felt tired. He was just emotionally drained. 

Maybe he could convince Eddie to go for takeout two nights in a row and then they could cuddle up and fall asleep on the couch together in front of the TV.

“Hey babe,” Richie pushed open the door to the bedroom to find Eddie sitting on the bed, basket of clean laundry next to him that he was mechanically sorting and folding.

“Thanks for doing the laundry.”

Eddie only hummed in response, not looking up from the shirt he was folding. Richie wasn’t sure if it was Eddie’s or his; their clothes had started to blend together once they moved in together, but especially so since they’d started dating.

“I, uh,” Richie’s mouth felt suddenly dry now that he was here in their bedroom, watching Eddie fold their laundry. “I got the Merlot. It’s down in the kitchen. They had a lot of different ones at the store, so I just got one that looked kind of Italian.”

Eddie hummed again, still folding, still not looking up at Richie.

Richie’s brow furrowed. He shifted nervously from one foot to the other, still hovering in the doorway.

Was Eddie acting weird? Or was  _ he  _ acting weird? Or both? Or maybe neither, maybe it was just Richie’s weird, anxious brain and guilty conscience that was overanalyzing every little thing. Maybe everything was totally normal.

“How was your meeting?” Eddie finally spoke, still looking down at the laundry he was folding.

“Huh?”

“Your meeting? The one you just had with Charlie?”

“Oh,” Richie’s heart pounded violently against his chest. His brain worked in overdrive, trying to sort through his racing thoughts to conjure up a response.

“It was… it was fine,” Richie cringed internally. Did he sound like he was dodging the question? How would he normally respond? Jesus, what even  _ was  _ normal for him?

“What did he want to talk to you about?”

Richie cursed in his mind. Should he try to change the subject? Would that just make him seem more guilty? 

And for that matter, what did he even have to be guilty about? Sure, he hadn’t gone where he said he was going, but nothing had even happened. It wasn’t like he’d actually cheated, or anything.

“Oh, ya know, just the normal stuff,” he finally answered in a way that he hoped was both casual and definitive, shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning against the doorway, still watching Eddie fold clothes.

“Normal stuff?”

Richie hummed in response.

“Like what?”

Was it just him, or was Eddie asking way more questions than he normally did?

“Just…” he bit his lip again, but stopped when he tasted blood. He’d chewed it raw after today. “Just stuff about Friday, since it’s my first time hosting.”

Eddie nodded in response, but still didn’t look up. Was that weird?

“Makes sense,” Eddie finally said as he folded the last shirt in the hamper, and Richie’s shoulders finally dropped, thankful that the conversation seemed to be over.

Or so he thought.

“What time do they need you to come in?”

Richie exhaled in relief. Finally a softball. 

“Six,” Richie answered easily. “The show starts at seven, and when I’m performing they always have me come an hour early.”

“Not this time.”

“What?”

“They need you to come at five this time, not six.”

Eddie had finally looked up to meet his gaze, but it didn’t help at all. His face was completely blank. Expressionless. It was like a mask.

Richie opened and closed his mouth a few times, stuttering stupidly, trying to come up with a response, but Eddie did nothing to throw him a lifeline, he just continued to stare blankly, coldly, as Richie tripped over his words.

“Do you know how I know that?”

He looked at Richie like he was waiting for some sort of response, but it quickly became apparent to both of them that he was not going to give one. The connection between his brain and his mouth had been severed.

“I know because Charlie called about an hour ago to tell you that.”

Without breaking eye contact, Eddie reached down to pick up Richie’s cell phone, which Richie hadn’t even noticed was sitting on the bed next to him. He held it up for a moment, and then tossed it in Richie’s direction. It landed on the floor between them with a loud thud.

“You see,” Eddie continued, voice still cold and lifeless. “He had to call, because it turns out he’s not actually in Chicago today.”

“Eddie…” Richie didn’t even consciously say it. It was barely even audible when it came out of his mouth.

“... which is interesting,” Eddie continued evenly, but the facade was finally starting to crumble, the cold, unfeeling mask of his face was now revealing the hurt beneath the surface. “Because you told me you were meeting with him today. At his club, here in Chicago.”

“Eddie…” Richie said again, a little louder this time. Seeing Eddie upset always did something to him; it spurred him into action. He pushed himself off the door jam and stood up straight.

“You lied to me, Richie,” Eddie said accusingly. The expressionless mask was completely gone. His brow was furrowed, and his mouth was downturned.

“Eddie,” Richie took a tentative step towards him, fully entering the room, but Eddie only crossed his arms defensively in response.

“Why would you lie?” his voice sounded strained, like he was fighting to keep it level and calm. “Where were you? Where were you  _ really _ ?”

Richie squeezed his eyes shut and sighed deeply. For the briefest of moments, he entertained the idea of making something up. But he’d already lied to Eddie once today, and just look at where that had landed him. Nothing good could possibly come from lying to him again, so that only left one possible option: telling the truth, and dealing with the consequences.

He opened his eyes, forcing himself to look Eddie in the eye as he spoke, even as he winced at the angry and hurt expression on Eddie’s face.

“Jake called this morning. That was him on the phone. He wanted to meet up and talk.”

The furrow on Eddie’s brow disappeared as his expression turned from one of mild anger to complete shock and disbelief. His mouth fell open slightly as he gawked at Richie, and he blinked a few times, trying to process the information.

“... Jake?” his voice sounded small and wounded.

“I know, I know,” Richie shook his head sharply, dragging a hand over his forehead and back through his hair. “I know it’s stupid, but he called and he sounded kind of upset, and I was worried, so I agreed to meet with him, and we met up to talk at that coffee shop by UC.”

Now that the flood gates were open, Richie couldn’t stop himself. He paced slightly on the carpet in front of Eddie as the words poured out of him, hands flailing wildly as he spoke.

“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. It’s just that I hadn’t heard from him in so long, and then I just… I don’t know. I fucking panicked. I don’t know why I lied, Eddie. It was so stupid. I should have just told you the truth. I’m… I’m so fucking sorry, baby.”

He felt almost relieved, now that it was all out in the open. It was like a weight had been lifted off of him. The seed of guilt in his brain had been squashed out. It had been uncomfortable, and it sucked to do it, but at least now the slate was clean. He wasn’t keeping a secret anymore, and he was glad about that. He didn’t want there to be any secrets between him and Eddie, not ever again.

He looked back at Eddie, a tentative half-smile on his face, but Eddie’s expression hadn’t changed. He still looked like he was in shock.

Richie took another step towards him and reached a hand out towards Eddie’s where it was resting on top of his crossed arms, but to his surprise Eddie sprung into motion, pulling his hand away and standing up abruptly, moving away from Richie.

Richie’s brow furrowed in confusion, but Eddie only took a step away from him, immediately folding his arms back in front of his chest defensively.

“You… you met with Jake.”

He’d said it as a statement, not a question, but Richie still nodded in response, fighting the urge to try to reach out and touch him again. He knew he had to respect Eddie’s boundaries, but at the same time he wished he could just pull him into his arms and hold him. He wished he could kiss away the lines of distress on Eddie’s face.

“Yes,” he finally added, trying to keep his voice calm. “Yes, I met with Jake. Just to talk.”

“So…” Eddie continued, tightening his arms in front of his chest. “So you met up with your ex… and what, just drank coffee and talked? What did you even talk about?”

Richie couldn’t help letting out a small huff of annoyance at the question. What the hell did it even matter what they talked about?

“Nothing, really. We just kinda, you know… caught up. We talked about how he’s doing, how I’m doing, we talked about my new job. We talked about you. Quite a bit, actually.”

He’d added the last part with the hopes that it would be reassuring to Eddie, but he only pressed his mouth into a thin line, still staring at Richie like he was trying to dissect his poker face.

“So that’s it? You just talked about your lives and drank coffee for an hour? That’s all?”

Richie started to answer in the affirmative, and then hesitated, remembering the kiss Jake had given him before he left. It wouldn’t exactly be a lie for him to just not tell Eddie about it. But even considering leaving out that detail made that seed of guilt nestle its way back back into his mind. He just couldn’t lie to Eddie again, not even a lie by omission, not after seeing how much the other lie had obviously hurt him.

“Well,” he began slowly, trying to figure out how to even say this, trying to determine if there was a way of putting it that would lessen the blow. “We, um, we finished talking… and then he went to leave. And, uh… he kissed me. And then he left.”

He’d averted his eyes near the end, rubbing the back of his neck nervously, but he forced himself to meet Eddie’s gaze again.

Eddie was so still, he almost looked like a statue. His arms were still folded protectively in front of him, but his expression had softened a bit. The furrow on his brow had subsided, and his eyes were wide, his mouth hanging open slightly. He blinked a few times, and swallowed hard.

“You…” his voice sounded very small, and very pained. “You kissed him?”

Richie shook his head immediately.

“No, no, no,” he said quickly, taking a step towards Eddie and extending his arm to touch him. “I didn’t. He kissed  _ me _ , Eddie. I didn’t kiss him back.”

Eddie sharply pulled his shoulder back, out of the reach of Richie’s arm, and Richie recoiled in response.

“So, what, did you push him away?”

Richie bit sharply into his chapped and bleeding lip.

“Well, no-”

“So you just sat there and let him kiss you?”

“No, Eddie, that’s not what happened-”

“Well then what happened?”

“ _ Nothing _ happened.”

“Really? Because that’s not what it sounds like!”

Eddie’s voice had been gradually escalating and it finally reached a shout on the final word. His brow was furrowed again, but no longer in confusion or disbelief. He was angry.

“Eddie,” Richie said softly, trying to de-escalate the situation before Eddie could get too worked up. He knew Eddie well, and he knew there was a point of no return when it came to his temper, but he was still holding onto hope that he could bring him back down before they reached that point. “Eddie, I would  _ never  _ cheat on you. You have to know that, baby.”

“But you kissed your ex today,” Eddie fired back.

“No-”

“Fine,” one of Eddie’s hands flew up and he waved it rapidly in front of him, his eyes squeezed shut. “ _ Got _ kissed  _ by  _ your ex. Whatever. Semantics.”

“It’s not  _ semantics _ , Eddie.”

Richie folded his own arms in front of his chest. He knew he’d made a mistake, and Eddie had a right to be upset about it to an extent, but he was also starting to feel weirdly defensive. He almost felt angry at the sheer suggestion that he would ever consider being with anybody else. Eddie was honestly being a little ridiculous at this point; he knew that Richie loved him, he knew that Richie had loved him for  _ years _ . He knew that there was nobody else in the world for Richie. He knew that for Richie, there would never be anybody else. Eddie was all he wanted, all he ever would want until the day his miserable life ended, and Eddie  _ knew  _ that, dammit.

“Look,” Richie continued, reaching up under his glasses to press his fingers over his eyelids, trying to hide the exasperation in his voice. “You were mad that I lied, and now you’re mad that I’m telling you the truth. What the hell do you even want from me?”

Richie knew it was a mistake before the words had even finished leaving his mouth. His mouth had gotten him in plenty of trouble over the years (he hadn’t earned the nickname Trashmouth for nothing), but he’d never regretted his words so much in his life.

Eddie stared at him blankly for a moment, and then his expression melded into one of pure fury.

“What do I want?” Eddie hissed, taking a step towards Richie, hand still outstretched, and he began counting off on his fingers exaggeratedly. “I want you to have  _ not  _ lied about where you were today. I want you to have  _ not  _ met up with your ex without me knowing. And I want you to have not kissed anybody today but me! Is that really so much to ask? Because it seems like there was a very simple way you could have avoided this, Richie, and it's that you could have just not done any of those things!”

“I fucked up!” Richie fired back, surprising even himself with the tone and volume of his voice. “I’m sorry! What else do you want me to say?”

Eddie looked completely taken aback. Almost flabbergasted. Richie had never really and truly yelled at him before. Not like this. His stunned silence only lasted for a moment though, before his own anger overtook him again.

“Oh, so because you’re sorry, I should just let it go?”

“Eddie, what should I do? It happened! It’s done!”

“Yeah, I’m aware that it  _ happened _ . That’s kind of the problem, Richie, that it fucking happened!”

“ _ Jesus _ , Eddie, will you just-”

“What?” Eddie shouted over him, and Richie buried his hands in his own hair, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head furiously, trying to block out the vicious verbal attacks. “Will I just what? For fuck’s sake Richie, you-”

“ **_Fuck_ ** !!”

Something inside of Richie snapped, and before he even realized what he was doing he had pulled his hands out of his hair, balled a hand into a fist, and swung it heavily into the wall next to him. It collided with a loud thunk that reverberated throughout the room and gave way to complete silence.

Richie felt his shoulders heave as he struggled to get his breathing under control. His knuckles throbbed, and he flexed his hand slightly, wincing in pain. He stared ahead of him for a moment, focusing on the small hole he’d left in the drywall, before finally turning his body back to face Eddie, who had been standing there silently.

Eddie looked… well, he looked afraid. There were no two ways about it. He was frozen in place, eyes wide, anger dissipated, and he was looking at Richie as though he were terrified.

It was the worst thing Richie had ever seen: having Eddie look at him like he was scared of him. Richie almost felt like he was shrinking, or like he was sinking into the floor, as every bit of anger was drained out of him and replaced with a massive weight of crushing regret.

He wanted to protect Eddie. He wanted to keep him safe. He wanted to be the one Eddie could always turn to when he was hurt or scared, the one who could chase his demons away and make him feel whole again. What he definitely didn’t want was to be the one who actually  _ made  _ Eddie feel hurt or scared.

He took the tiniest of steps towards Eddie, raising a hand towards him slightly, and was absolutely horrified to see Eddie flinch away from him.

“Eddie…” he really didn’t know what to say, but he felt like he had to say something. He had to somehow fix this. He couldn’t handle the way Eddie was looking at him, like he was dangerous, like… like Richie could have just as easily swung his fist at  _ him _ .

The very thought of hitting Eddie made Richie feel like he could just… disintegrate.

“Eddie, please…” he made his voice even softer, made another attempt at reaching towards him. He had to somehow make him understand that he was safe, that despite that outburst of anger, Richie would never hurt him.

“Don’t touch me.”

The words stopped Richie in his tracks. His tone was harsh, but his voice was shaking. He sounded so small and afraid. It made his heart ache worse than his throbbing knuckles.

Eddie took a step backwards, still staring at Richie with wide eyes, shaking his head slightly. His eyes started to glimmer with the beginnings of tears.

“I don’t… I don’t even know who you are anymore, Richie.”

He stepped to the side, then forward, moving past Richie and towards the door, moving to leave the room. Something inside Richie twisted in panic. He couldn’t let Eddie walk away like this, he couldn’t let him leave thinking he was violent and dangerous and could potentially hurt Eddie.

He couldn’t let him walk away  _ period _ . He had to fix this.

“Eddie, please…”

Eddie didn’t stop, and Richie’s arm instinctively shot out, his large hand wrapping tightly around Eddie’s slender forearm, trying to stop him in his tracks.

Eddie gasped loudly and yanked his arm away, and Richie simultaneously jumped back like he’d been electrocuted. They stood for a moment, several feet apart, facing each other, both breathing heavily, absolutely stunned into silence over what had just happened.

Richie cursed himself with every fiber of his being, hating his own hand for reaching out and grabbing Eddie like that. It was instinctive, he hadn’t been trying to hurt Eddie, he just didn’t want Eddie to leave, but still…

A tear escaped Eddie’s eye and trailed down his cheek. He was still looking at Richie with a look of absolute shock and horror, and Richie squeezed his eyes shut, as if he could make this all go away, as if he could somehow take it back.

But he couldn’t take it back. He’d done it. He’d grabbed Eddie’s arm. Just like  _ she  _ always had.

Richie and Eddie had been friends since they were children, but it wasn’t until they were 11 that he first saw Eddie’s mom grab him. He’d been trying to leave the house to go out to play with Richie and their other friends, but his mom had insisted he take his medicine first. Eddie had taken it, swallowed down his pills in the kitchen with a glass of water, Richie had watched him do it. But when he went to walk out the door with Richie, his mom had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and grabbed his arm in a vice grip, claiming he was lying about taking the pills. She’d dragged him back into the house by his arm, Eddie crying the whole way. 

At 11 years old, it was the worst thing Richie had ever witnessed.

He started noticing more, after that. He noticed how Eddie would often have bruises on his arms that he could easily explain away with obviously rehearsed excuses, but Richie could clearly see they were the exact size and shape of Mrs. Kaspbrak’s hands.

The worst day was when they were 13 and Eddie had shown up at school one morning with his arm in a cast. He had a story to explain it away, just like he always did with the bruises, and everyone seemed to accept the story, but Richie knew. He’d seen the bruises over the years, he’d seen how rough his mom would get with him. He just knew that she’d broken it and fed him some bullshit story to tell everyone.

Richie had waited until they were alone to confront Eddie about it. He insisted Eddie had to tell him the truth. They were best friends. They told each other everything.

After some coaxing, Eddie had finally broken down and told him the real story. His mother had indeed broken it. She’d grabbed him, like she always did, but this time she’d gone just a little too far.

Eddie had cried, and Richie had told himself that he was going to absolutely kill Mrs. Kaspbrak. How could she have hurt her son like this? How could she look at such a beautiful, amazing boy, and grab him and hurt him?

And now Richie had done exactly that.

“Eddie…” Richie’s voice was strangled. He almost sounded like he was drowning. “Eddie, I’m so sorry…”

Eddie only shook his head, silent tears still trailing down his cheeks. He began to back slowly out of the room, looking at Richie as though he were a wild animal.

At the doorway he turned and started to walk quickly away. Richie could hear him descending the creaky stairs, and the noise spurred him into action. He hurriedly left the room and descended the stairs as well, finding Eddie down at the front door, shoving on his shoes and pulling on his jacket.

“Eddie, please,” Richie begged when he caught up to him at the door. “Please, please don’t leave. We… we can talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to say,” Eddie responded, his voice wet with tears but still definitive.

Richie could only watch as Eddie pulled up the hood on his jacket and stepped out into the still-pouring rain.

“Eddie…” Richie pleaded one last time before the front door slammed in his face.

For a long moment, Richie stayed exactly like that, standing in the entryway, staring at the closed door, as if any second it would open again and Eddie would come back inside so they could sit down and talk about this, really talk about it, not fight, not scream, but  _ talk _ , until they’d worked everything out and they were okay again.

Eventually Richie turned around and fell back against the door, sliding down to the floor as he began sobbing uncontrollably. He wrapped his arms around his legs and buried his face in his knees, feeling so angry and upset, but not at Eddie. Not even at Jake. At himself. He was the only one to blame for this, for  _ all  _ of this. He’d done this to himself, and he deserved to feel hurt, but Eddie didn’t. He had hurt Eddie. Eddie was the only boy Richie had ever truly loved, and he had hurt him.

He stayed down there for a while, just sobbing and wailing and feeling sorry for himself, until eventually he noticed that it had gotten dark, meaning it had been at least a couple of hours since Eddie had walked out.

Meaning Eddie had been out by himself, probably crying, for hours.

This realization finally spurred him into action. He climbed up on shaky legs and made his way back upstairs to the bedroom, locating his cell phone on the floor where Eddie had thrown it earlier.

Swallowing back another wave of tears, he attempted to call Eddie’s cell phone. It went to voicemail, which was unsurprising, but he had to try.

He paced back and forth in the room a bit, then tried again, but again there was no answer.

Richie squeezed his eyes shut and ran a trembling hand through his hair, wincing slightly at the pain in his throbbing knuckles. He probably should be icing them to prevent swelling, but he decided against it. This was his punishment. He didn’t deserve relief from the pain he was experiencing.

He tried Eddie one more time before he gave up and called Stan instead. He could understand why Eddie wouldn’t be answering his calls right now, but he couldn’t help but imagine Eddie out there by himself, wandering the streets of Chicago in the dark, all alone and quite possibly still crying.

Stan also didn’t answer, but Richie left a quick voicemail. He skimped on the gorey details, but explained that he and Eddie had had a fight and Eddie had walked out and he just wanted to make sure he was okay. He asked Stan to call if he heard from Eddie, then ended the message and tried Bill next. He made his way through their entire friends list, giving each of them a brief explanation of the situation and begging them to please try to get ahold of Eddie, hoping Eddie would answer the phone for one of them if he still wouldn’t answer for Richie. He had to know that Eddie was okay.

After hanging up with Mike, Richie tossed his phone on the bed and paced some more, before finally coming to a stop in front of the bed, looking at all the laundry that Eddie had neatly folded. This made him start crying again, but once that wave of tears had subsided, he started picking up the laundry and putting it away in the drawers and closet. If… no, not if,  _ when  _ Eddie came back, he would appreciate that Richie had put everything away. 

He was just hanging up the last of Eddie’s work slacks in the closet when his phone rang. He dove onto the bed to grab it.

Stan.

Richie quickly hit the button to answer and held the phone eagerly up to his ear.

“Stan! Hey! You, uh, you got my message-”

“He’s here,” Stan interjected, voice level and calm as always.

A wave of relief washed over Richie.

“Oh, thank God.”

Eddie may still be hurt, but at least he was somewhere safe and with friends, and not just out wandering the streets by himself.

“Is he… is he okay?”

“Physically? Yes,” Stan answered dryly. “Emotionally? No. Psychologically? Jury’s still out.”

Richie cursed under his breath. A massive headache was starting to creep its way up from the base of his neck.

“Can I… should I come over there?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Well, can I talk to him then? Could you put him on the phone?”

“No, Richie, I don’t think he wants to talk to you right now.”

Richie swallowed back some more tears as he struggled to find the right words to say in response. He could hear Stan sigh deeply on the other end of the phone.

“Look, Richie,” he explained calmly. “We’re putting him up in the guest room for tonight. He’s getting ready to go to bed. I’d recommend you do the same. He’s here, he’s safe, and that’s what really matters right now. Just go to sleep. We can figure all this out in the morning, okay?”

At first Richie started to protest; he felt he had so much more to stay, both to Stan and to Eddie. Part of him wanted to insist Stan put Eddie on the phone, but deep down he knew that Stan was right.

Stan was always right, as infuriating as that could be sometimes.

“Okay. Thank you, Stan. For taking care of him.”

Stan made a noise of affirmation on the other end of the line.

“Talk to ya later, Trashmouth.”

“Goodnight, Stan the Man.”

-

When Richie woke up the next morning, his first emotion was confusion.

First of all, he was confused about why he was waking up on the sofa, and not in his bed. While he and Eddie would occasionally fall asleep on the couch together if they were up late watching TV, Richie would usually wake up during the night and carry his sleeping boyfriend up to their bed. He was also confused because he rarely woke up without Eddie next to him. Even on the days when Eddie had to wake up early to go to work, Richie would usually wake up with him to kiss him goodbye.

He was also confused about why he was still wearing his street clothes of jeans and a t-shirt, and not pajamas or even sweatpants, which he would usually change into if he was just lounging around the house.

And he was very confused about why his right hand was throbbing painfully, almost as if it had its own heartbeat.

Then the events of the previous day came rushing back to him, and specifically those from the night before. The memories came charging into his brain, banging open doors and shouting, and he clapped his hands over his eyes, as if that would keep them out.

_ Fuck _ .

He had fucked up. He had fucked up so many times in one day, it had to be a world record. He’d gone to meet his ex, and lied to his current boyfriend about it. He’d then kissed his ex (to be fair, he’d  _ been  _ kissed  _ by  _ his ex, but that hardly seemed to matter now) and tried to go home to his boyfriend like nothing had happened. He’d been caught in the lie, and he’d tried to deflect and shift the blame. He’d yelled and screamed at his boyfriend, he’d fucking punched a wall and scared his boyfriend (the swollen and bruised knuckles on his right hand were an unfriendly reminder of that particular detail), and then to top it all off he’d grabbed his boyfriend’s arm in the exact same way his abusive mother used to, undoubtedly triggering all sorts of PTSD in him.

And all of this had occurred with a boyfriend he claimed to love more than life itself, a boy he said he wanted to marry and spend the rest of his life with, a boy he had vowed to himself to love and protect forever.

Yep, he was the world’s biggest fuckup.

He was in the process of wishing the couch would just open up and swallow him whole, suffocating him in the cushions, when he heard the sound of a key turning in a lock.

Richie shot off the couch, getting tangled in the thin blanket that he’d been sleeping under, but diving towards the front door just as it was swinging open.

“Ed-”

Stan stepped into the entryway, tucking Eddie’s key into the pocket of his jacket.

“Hey Rich.”

“... hey.”

Richie visibly deflated.

“Well don’t act too happy to see me,” Stan teased good-naturedly, and Richie tried to force a smile in response. Despite his overwhelming self-pity, he was still thankful to Stan for opening up his home to Eddie last night, he really was, and he didn’t want to seem ungrateful.

Richie leaned heavily against the wall next to him, fighting exhaustion. He didn’t even know what time it was or how long he’d slept. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what day it was.

“Sorry, just… rough night, you know?” 

He wasn’t sure how much Eddie had told him about what happened last night; he tried to search Stan’s face for any indication of what exactly he knew about the current situation, but he was as unreadable as always. He only nodded curtly in response before leaning down to take off his shoes.

“Eddie gave me his key,” Stan elaborated as he undid his shoelaces. “He has to go to work tomorrow so he needs some of his stuff.” 

There was nothing at all abrasive to be found in the sentence, but the implication hit Richie like a knife to the heart. 

He’d asked Stan to get his stuff for work. That meant that he had no intention to return home, at least not today. Maybe not for the whole week.

Maybe not ever.

Richie pushed the thought quickly out of his mind, not wanting to have a breakdown here in the hallway in front of Stan. Instead, he nodded in a way that he hoped seemed understanding before he turned and led Stan up the stairs to his and Eddie’s room.

He stood awkwardly off to the side as Stan went to the closet to pull out some of Eddie’s work clothes, folding them carefully and putting them in the duffel bag that was slung over his shoulder. Richie crossed and uncrossed his arms a few times, and alternated between leaning against the door jam and standing up straight. He opened and closed his mouth, wanting to say something, wanting to ask a thousand questions, but also kind of not wanting to know the answers. 

“So…” he finally began, cringing at how pathetic his voice sounded. “He, uh, he asked you to get his stuff?”

“Mmhmm,” Stan hummed in response.

“Why… why didn’t he just come get it?”

“He didn’t want to see you, Richie,” Stan answered, blase as ever.

Stan paused, apparantly having realized the torture those simple words must have put Richie in. He turned to look at Richie dead-on, face still neutral, but his mouth was turned ever so slightly upward. A casual observer might not have even noticed, but Richie had known Stan since they were children, and he knew that was as close to a sympathetic facial expression as he was going to get from him.

“He just asked for a few things, just a couple changes of clothes, stuff he needs for work. Really just enough for a couple of days,” Stan stated matter-of-factly, but Richie could tell he was trying to be kind, and he smiled slightly in appreciation. It wasn’t like Stan to take sides in an argument, but Richie felt comforted in knowing that Stan was not completely against him, even if he may not be entirely  _ with  _ him on this.

Stan grabbed Eddie’s laptop off the bed and tucked that into his bag as well before zipping it up.

“Does he need his toothbrush or anything? I can grab it,” Richie volunteered.

“I gave him an extra.”

Richie nodded in response, still standing awkwardly in the doorway. He felt so useless. He just wanted to do something, anything.

“Anyway, I guess I should head out,” Stan moved towards him, and Richie quickly shifted out of the way to let him walk out of the room and down the stairs.

He stood in their room for a few minutes, battling with himself, before finally turning and chasing after Stan.

“Stan!” he called after him, bounding down the stairs.

Stan paused where he was in the process of putting his shoes back on at the door.

“Yeah?”

Richie hovered over him, somehow out of breath from just the quick jog down the stairs, trying to organize his thoughts. Stan quirked up an eyebrow at him questioningly as he started doing up his shoelaces.

“Is he…” he began the sentence without even really knowing where it was going. “I mean, what did he… uh, I mean… has he…”

He trailed off as Stan finished tying his shoes and stood up. Stan reached up a hand and clapped it down onto Richie’s shoulder heavily, in a way that was not quite comforting, but not quite confrontational either.

“Richie, I’m gonna be straight with you. It’s not good.”

Richie’s heart plummeted.

“You lied to him.”

“I know, I know…”

“You flat out  _ lied _ , man.”

“I know…”

“You kissed someone else.”

Richie started to argue the point, but stopped himself immediately. It hardly mattered now.

“You punched a fucking wall during an argument.”

“Stan, I was just angry, we were fighting-”

“Yeah Rich, that’s kinda the problem. I think Eddie was a little concerned that your method of dealing with you guys having a fight was to  _ punch  _ something.”

“Stan, I would  _ never  _ hit Eddie. Please, you have to know that.  _ He  _ has to know that. He can’t honestly think I would-”

“And then you grabbed him,” Stan interjected. “Just like she did.”

Richie physically recoiled at the revelation.

“You… you knew? About his mom?”

“Richie, we all knew. Nobody gets that many fucking bruises on their arms, let alone in the perfect shape of hands. We knew his mom was hurting him. He just wouldn’t actually talk about it with any of us except you. He trusted you. He’s always trusted you, more than anyone else.”

A lone tear finally escaped Richie’s eye and rolled down his cheek. He just couldn’t fight it anymore. He could only pretend to be okay for so long.

Stan sighed deeply, removing his hand from Richie’s shoulder and pressing it against his own forehead before dragging it through his hair.

“You fucked up, Richie.”

“I know, I know, I know,” Richie angrily wiped away his tears and sniffled, chastising himself for breaking down again. “I just… if I could just see him. If I could just talk to him…”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”

Richie shook his head, cursing furiously under his breath. If he could just make Eddie understand how much he means to him, how much Richie loves him...

“Jesus,” Richie ran his hands through his own hair in exasperation. “What the fuck should I do? Should I send him ten thousand roses? Should I show up outside his window with a boombox on my shoulder? Should I write him a fucking song? I’ll do it, Stan. I’ll do anything.”

“Richie, what he wants right now is space. After what happened, it’s important that you show him some respect. It’s not about whether or not you love him. I know that you love him. He knows that you love him. You don’t need to show him that you love him. You need to show him that you  _ respect  _ him. That’s really what it all comes back to. The lying, the cheating, even punching the wall and grabbing him. You broke his trust. That’s what this is really about.”

Stan ended his monologue by staring Richie down, long and hard, and Richie stammered in response, trying to find the words.

“How do… how do I get him to trust me again?” Richie asked weakly.

“Fuck if I know,” Stan responded dryly. “But respecting his need for space right now is a good place to start. When he’s ready to talk to you, he’ll reach out. But you might have to give him time, Richie. You have to be patient.”

Once again, a casual observer likely would have thought Stan was being flippant, or even dismissive, but Richie could tell otherwise. He knew Stan cared. He knew Stan cared about him, he knew Stan cared about Eddie, and he knew Stan cared about their relationship. He wasn’t giving anything away with either his voice or his demeanor, but he was imploring Richie not to fuck this up.

Richie reached forward and grasped Stan’s hand, squeezing it quickly and letting it go.

“Thank you, Stan.”

Stan only gave him a short nod in response before disappearing out the door, but Richie still swelled with appreciation for his friend.

After a moment, his eyes drifted down to the rug by the door. It had been bought by Eddie, obviously. 

It was ever so slightly crooked, which was something that Richie probably wouldn’t notice under normal circumstances, and even if he did, he certainly wouldn’t bother to fix it.

Eddie, on the other hand, would straighten the rug every time they went in or out of the house, even if it wasn’t crooked at all. Richie would always tease him for it, and Eddie would always bite back with something along the lines of “well excuse me for not wanting us to live like animals”.

Richie bent down and straightened the rug.

-

Eddie traced a finger slowly over the pattern on the bedspread in Stan and Patty’s guest room. 

He wasn’t even sure how long he’d been lying here, propped up against the pillows, just completely zoning out. It could have been minutes or even hours. 

Stan had left some amount of time ago to go to his apartment and get some of his stuff, including his laptop and some clothes for work tomorrow. In the meantime, he’d tried to busy himself by reading a book he’d selected from the bookshelf in the guest room, but he couldn’t focus. Eventually he’d realized he was just reading the same sentence over and over, but not really absorbing it, so he closed the book and just stared at the bedspread instead.

Part of him felt like crying again, but he was completely cried out. He’d already cried last night when he was running away from his apartment, and he’d cried as he’d walked around aimlessly in the rain, ignoring calls on his cell phone from Richie, feeling homeless and lost. He’d cried again when he showed up on Stan’s porch, shivering from the rain, and he’d cried as he’d recounted the events of the day to Stan, taking him through everything from the phone call he’d inadvertently intercepted on Richie’s cell, to catching Richie in the lie, to discovering where he’d really been, to the confrontation and the shocking explosion of anger out of Richie. Stan had wrapped him up in a warm blanket and given up a cup of hot tea, and rubbed his back as he’d cried and cried, until eventually Stan had laid him down in the guest room and he’d drifted off to sleep. He’d cried again during the night when he’d woken up from yet another nightmare, and had only cried harder when he realized he was alone in a strange bed, and his boyfriend’s strong arms weren’t going to wrap around him and hold him until he fell back asleep, so he had to cry himself back to sleep instead.

He just couldn’t cry anymore. He didn’t even have the energy for it.

He’d woken up that morning and had breakfast and coffee with Stan and Patty. They’d both been kind and welcoming, but he still felt lost and mildly panicked. He didn’t know where to go from here. He hadn’t thought this through at all, everything he’d done since the end of his fight with Richie had been completely impulsive, including running out on him.

Part of him knew he’d have to go back home eventually, but he just didn’t think he could face Richie. Not yet.

Patty and Stan had clearly been able to sense his distress over breakfast, because after excusing themselves to have a brief whispered meeting out in the hallway, they came back in to assure Eddie that he can stay the night with them again if he needs to, that the guest room is completely his and that he is always welcome in their home. He’d thanked them profusely, but still lamented over having to return home to get his work clothes some time before tomorrow morning. Without missing a beat, Stan had volunteered to go for him, and within five minutes he was walking out the door with Eddie’s key in his hand and an empty duffle bag slung over his shoulder.

He’d sat with Patty in the kitchen a bit longer, sipping coffee and chatting idly. She talked a bit about wedding planning, then abruptly stopped, clearly wondering if it was in bad taste for her to talk about her upcoming nuptials when Eddie’s relationship was at such a low point, but he welcomed the distraction. He asked her question after question, and she happily gave him all the details, from dress shopping to seating charts to bachelorette parties. He couldn’t help but smile at her bubbly enthusiasm.

Eddie had tried his best to help Patty with the dishes, but she’d shooed him out of the kitchen before he could so much as lift a sponge, so he’d made his way back to the guest room, heart heavy, feeling completely exhausted despite his three cups of coffee.

Hearing about the wedding planning had been a nice distraction at the time, but now he felt a bit wistful about it. He and Richie had been together for a year, and Eddie had actually started thinking about the possibility that they might get married one day. These were the things he’d started thinking about for his own wedding: what they would wear, where they would hold the reception, the kind of flowers they would have...

Now, he wasn’t so sure. He wasn’t sure about any of it.

Eddie finally tossed the book down on the bed and laid down on his side, curling into a ball and wrapping his arms around himself, trying to provide a sad substitute for the way Richie would always hold him when he was hurting.

He’d honestly give anything to feel Richie’s arms around him again. It made him feel so warm and safe and comforted, more so than he’d ever felt before in his life. Richie just made him feel secure, he always had.

At least he had until yesterday. Until last night.

Just thinking about it made Eddie’s head spin. The entire day almost seemed like a dream, like one of his horrible nightmares. It was like the actions yesterday had been committed by a completely different person, because when he went over it, none of it seemed like the Richie he knew.

He’d lied to Eddie, he’d told him he was going to a fucking work meeting when he was really going to meet up with his ex. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d tried to act like Eddie was the one acting out of pocket by being upset about it, Riche had tried to invalidate his feelings, even after admitting he and Jake had kissed. He’d gotten irate and angry, he’d gotten  _ violent _ .

And worst of all, he’d grabbed him.

Richie had grabbed him, just like his mother always did.

Deep down, Eddie knew it was different. With his mother, it was about control. It always was. Everything with his mother had been about control: all the years convincing him he was sick, all the countless pills she’d pushed down his throat that turned out to be fucking placebos the whole time. She just couldn’t stand not being in control of him, not for one second.

Richie wasn’t like that. He didn’t try to control Eddie. He never had. He’d always actively encouraged Eddie to be independent and live his own life. But when he’d grabbed Eddie’s arm, and he’d felt that strong hand wrap around his forearm like a vice, all Eddie could see was his mother, all he could hear was her voice, ordering him to come back inside and take his pills, telling him he’d die if he didn’t listen to her.

It was true what he’d said to Richie last night.

“I don’t even know who you are anymore,” he whispered it again to himself.

The man he’d run out on last night was not the same man who made him feel safe and loved. It just couldn’t be.

Still alone with his thoughts, his mind drifted back even further, to the day before, the bubbling excitement he’d had when Richie was going to interview for his new job. How happy he’d been for Richie that he’d gotten the job (even though Eddie knew he would, he’d worked so hard, of course he got it). He thought back to them kissing in their kitchen when Richie had gotten home, how perfect everything had felt in that moment, like everything was just… right.

It almost felt like it was a lifetime ago, rather than just a day before.

And then when they’d made love… Eddie squeezed his eyes shut as he remembered.

They’d had unprotected sex. For the first time in their relationship (and for the first time in Eddie’s life), he’d had sex without using a condom. To a lot of people it might not seem like a big deal, but to Eddie it really was. He’d honestly thought he would never, ever have sex without protection, at least not until he was married. But with Richie, it just seemed right. They’d known each other their whole lives, they’d been together for an entire year, it felt like it was time to take that step. And in that moment, it had been good. It had been better than good, it had been absolutely amazing, he’d felt like he was connecting to Richie like he’d never connected to anyone before. It was just beautiful and perfect and such a powerful expression of their love.

Now, as he laid in bed in Stan’s guest room and thought back on it, he could feel his stomach twist up in nausea. The moment was soiled, it was shattered apart like glass, and it made him want to cry.

He’d trusted Richie so much. He’d truly believed that it was safe to be with him without protection. But then the very next day, Richie had lied to him. After learning that Richie had gone to see his ex behind Eddie’s back, and that he’d  _ kissed  _ his ex…

Eddie was thankfully rescued from spiraling further down that line of thought by the sound of the front door opening. He heard Stan greet Patty before climbing the stairs up to the guest room, knocking softly on the door.

“Come in,” Eddie called out as he sat up in bed, hating how weak and pathetic his voice sounded.

“Hey Eds,” Stan came in and sat on the edge of the bed next to Eddie, setting the duffle bag down on the floor. “I got your stuff. A couple shirts and some slacks for work, plus your laptop.”

“Thank you, Stan,” Eddie leaned forward and wrapped his arms around his knees, staring down at his bare feet. “I appreciate it. I appreciate… everything.”

He felt Stan lay a hand on one of his knees comfortingly.

“You know you can stay here as long as you want. As long as you need to.”

Eddie looked up to meet Stan’s eyes, a weak smile on his face.

“Thank you.”

Stan smiled back at him and squeezed his knee gently before letting his hand slide down onto the mattress. He looked like he was about to stand up, his mission completed, but Eddie stopped him when he spoke again.

“Was he there?”

Stan sighed deeply, evidently already resenting where this was going, but Eddie still looked at him expectantly.

“Yes. He was,” Stan replied, voice even flatter than usual.

“How… how was he?”

“You really want to know?”

He did. It was almost a morbid curiosity, and Stan gazed down at him with a look of clear disapproval, but he still felt he had to know.

“Yes.”

“Honest answer?”

“Yes.”

Stan sighed again, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing his thumb and forefinger over his eyelids.

“He’s a fucking wreck, Eddie.”

Eddie let his forehead fall down onto his knees, hard enough that it hurt.

“Fuck.”

He squeezed his arms around his knees, almost as if he could fold in on himself and disappear.

“Fuck.”

Eddie threw his head back, yelling up into the ceiling.

“ _ Fuck _ !”

He lowered his head to see Stan still sitting there, completely unfazed by his little outburst. Still, Eddie couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed by it.

“Sorry.”

“Eddie, it’s okay to be angry at him for what he did. You know that, right? You don’t have to apologize for it. He hurt you. You’re allowed to be upset about it. It’s healthy to be angry.”

Eddie couldn’t help but snort. While the sentiment was appreciated, it just felt a little too rich, coming from Stan. Eddie couldn’t imagine Stan angry if he tried.

“Thanks, Stan.”

He brought his wrist up to his mouth to chew on the cuff of his sleeve mindlessly as he mulled everything over. Stan was right. Of course he was, Stan was so fucking logical. But just how angry  _ should  _ Eddie be?  _ Was  _ he overreacting? He certainly didn’t feel like it.

“It’s just… how could he have done this? How could he have done any of it, Stan? He saw his ex. He kissed him, or got kissed by him, whatever. And he lied to me about it… I mean, if he lied about this… it’s just… what else has he lied about, Stan? What if this isn’t the first time Richie’s seen him since we started dating? What if… what if he’s been seeing him the whole time?”

Eddie almost felt like he was starting to hyperventilate. For the first time in many, many years, he wished he had his inhaler, even though he had learned as a teenager that the inhaler he had used entire childhood was filled with water vapor and was just another bullshit fucking placebo his mom had tricked him into thinking he needed.

“Eddie,” Stan placed a calming hand on Eddie’s forearm, bringing him back down to earth. “You know I respect you and think the world of you, but that sounds absolutely fucking idiotic. Richie fucked up, and he fucked up bad, but one thing you can be sure of is Richie is completely in love with you. He is the definition of smitten, and he has been for years. I’m surprised he even knows other guys exist. To him, you’re the only boy in the world. And that’s the honest truth.

Eddie exhaled slowly and placed a hand on top of Stan’s where it was still resting on Eddie’s forearm. He rocked back and forth slightly and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to sort through all his thoughts and feelings and put them in some sort of order.

“I know. I know, it’s just… it hurts. I’m hurt. I’m hurt, and I’m angry, and you did say it was okay for me to be hurt and angry.”

“Yes I did, and yes it is. It’s okay to feel hurt by him, and it’s okay to be angry that he made you feel this way. Just know that he never meant to hurt you.”

Eddie stopped rocking. He squeezed Stan’s hand hard before releasing it, looking up at him with appreciative eyes.

“Thank you, Stan. Really. I… I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t for you. And Patty too. Just… thanks. For everything.”

Stan gave him a kind smile in return.

“Relationships are tough, Eddie. They really are. To be perfectly truthful, I’m kind of amazed you and Richie have gotten this far without a huge fight. I honestly thought you two would only make it a couple months before you just pushed him in front of an L train.”

Eddie laughed at that, and Stan chuckled a bit as well before patting his knee twice and standing up.

“I put some fresh towels in the bathroom for you so you can take a shower. Or if you want to take a bath, there’s a great whirlpool tub in the master bathroom. I haven’t used it yet but Patty says it’s luxurious. Patty has a work thing she has to go to tonight, so she’ll be gone all evening, but we can get some dinner later and then maybe we can just watch a movie or something?

Eddie smiled at Stan, the first genuinely happy smile he’d had in the last 24 hours.

“That sounds great. Love you, Stan.”

“Love you too, Eddie.”

-

The first day after Eddie left, Richie didn’t do much of anything.

After Stan left with Eddie’s things, Richie kind of drifted through the apartment like a ghost for a while, occasionally stopping in front of some random object: a lamp, some window curtains, a blender, and just thinking about all the times he’d seen Eddie touch that object or use it or even just walk by it. He’d think about it, and he’d cry.

Eventually he landed in front of the bottle of wine he’d picked up the day before on his way home, still sitting on the counter where he’d left it. The bottle of wine Eddie had requested.

He popped it open and drank the whole thing on his own, straight out of the bottle, sitting on the floor of the kitchen and crying to himself. 

He was drunk, and he was angry and sad, he was a mess, a complete and total trainwreck, but he still wished Eddie was there. He wished Eddie was there to help his drunk, stupid self up to bed. 

He felt like a black hole that needed to suck in a star, just to feel brightness, even for a moment.

He cried some more, then fell asleep, right there on the kitchen floor.

It was dark when he woke up, and he crawled back to the couch to spend the night again. He had an awful crick in his neck from spending the previous night on the couch, but he just couldn’t bring himself to go sleep in his bed. 

It wasn’t even  _ his  _ bed. It had been Eddie’s bed, and then it became their bed when they had started dating. It just didn’t feel right to sleep in it by himself, especially while Eddie was off sleeping in Stan’s guest bedroom. He didn’t think he could even fall asleep in that bed without Eddie next to him.

The second day after Eddie was gone was better. He woke up on the couch again, and he had a nasty hangover and a sore back, but something inside him felt alive again. He was done with the self-pity party.

He’d gotten up and folded the blanket he’d been sleeping under, draping it over the back of the couch the way Eddie always did. He went into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee, then scooped up the empty wine bottle where it was still on the floor. At first he just tossed it in the recycling bin in their kitchen (Eddie was a huge stickler for sorting their trash), but then he’d just gone ahead and taken out both the trash and the recycling. 

The coffee was ready when he got back in, so he poured himself a cup and fixed himself breakfast (cold cereal, but still better than yesterday when he hadn’t eaten a thing). While he sat at the table and chewed, he gazed around at the kitchen, trying to see it through Eddie’s eyes. Eddie could look at any room and see things that needed to be cleaned or tidied up. 

He ended up just cleaning the whole kitchen. He did his dishes first, then washed the coffee pot as well. He then wiped down all the counters, scrubbed the stovetop, and cleaned the crumbs out of the toaster, finally sweeping and mopping the floor.

He stood in the middle of the kitchen for a moment, just looking around and admiring his work. It wasn’t that he hadn’t done these things before, but never without Eddie asking, or at least suggestively mentioning that they needed to be done.

It felt… good. He felt like he’d done a good thing.

Richie ended up cleaning the whole house. He moved from room to room, sweeping, vacuuming, wiping down shelves, and fluffing up cushions. He even fixed the wobbly leg on the TV stand like Eddie had been nagging him to do for weeks.

He made his way through the living room, the entryway, the hallway, the bathroom, Richie’s old room, and when he finally got to their bedroom, it was starting to get dark. 

There wasn’t much to do in the bedroom since Richie hadn’t been in there since Stan left the morning before, but he remade the bed, refolded all the clothes in the dresser, and checked to make sure the closet was sorted the way Eddie liked it.

By the time it was late in the evening, Richie felt exhausted again, but it actually felt kind of good, in a strange way. It wasn’t emotional exhaustion, it was accomplished exhaustion. He was tired because he’d been working all day, busying himself and getting stuff done, not because he’d been moping around and whipping himself into a state like he had yesterday.

It felt important to keep the place looking nice, to keep it how Eddie liked it. If… no, not if,  _ when  _ Eddie came back, he would appreciate these little touches.

Well, maybe it actually  _ was  _ if. 

Not when. 

Richie mused to himself as he settled back into the couch for the night, still unable to bring himself to sleep in the bed. As much as it pained him to think about it, Eddie very well may never come back to him. He might show up to get his stuff and leave for good. Or he might not even show up for that, he might just send Stan again.

And that wouldn’t be an overreaction. Richie had crossed a line. In fact, he’d crossed many lines. The lying, the cheating (sort of), the physical violence. Couples broke up over a lot less.

But at the same time, Richie had to believe that he and Eddie were different. They’d only been together for a year, but that year was built on top of more than a decade of friendship. A decade of being  _ best  _ friends. There was so much between them, he had to keep believing they could get past this. That Eddie would come home any day now, and they could talk about their relationship and work through their fight. Richie was willing to do whatever it took, he was willing to do anything and everything he could to make this right, and he had to believe that Eddie would give him another chance. 

But he had also begun to wrap his head around the concept that this was now largely out of his control. The ball was, so to speak, in Eddie’s court. It was up to him whether he was going to forgive Richie.

And the more Richie thought about it, the more he realized that above all else, he just wanted Eddie to be happy. And if Eddie decided he would be happier without having Richie as his boyfriend, or even without having Richie in his life at all, then Richie would accept it. It would hurt like a thousand knives to the heart, but he would accept it.

And even though he longed more than anything to just be in his bed holding Eddie, he was still able to fall asleep that night, not necessarily hoping, not necessarily having given up either, but simply accepting.

In my head I do everything right

When you call I’ll forgive and not fight

Because ours are the moments I play in the dark

We were wild and fluorescent,

Come home to my heart

  * Lorde, Supercut



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for any and all pain I have caused you. The last part will be up tomorrow night, and I promise the makeup sex will be extraordinary!


	3. Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with it y'all! Hope this is enough smut to make up for the heartache.

On the third day, Eddie called. Richie thought it was a mirage at first. When he saw Eddie’s name on his phone, he thought for sure it was a hallucination induced by a broken heart.

But then he answered, and when he heard Eddie’s voice on the other end, he had to fight like hell to keep his voice from betraying how much he was breaking down on the inside. He hadn’t even realized how much he’d missed just the sound of his voice over the last two days, but when he heard it, it was like hearing his favorite song from when he was a teenager, a song he’d loved, but forgotten how much he’d loved until it came on the radio.

Eddie didn’t give away anything in his voice, just asked Richie to meet him at the cafe around the corner from their apartment. Richie wasn’t sure what to make of the request; on the one hand, asking to meet in a neutral place rather than Eddie just coming back to their home seemed like a bad sign, but on the other hand, it was a cafe that they loved, a place that held so many great memories for them and meant so much to them as a couple.

It was actually where they’d had their first real date. They’d gone there for coffee and muffins the night after they first got together and had a playful argument on who was supposed to pay on the first date, one that went on long enough to exasperate the barista, but left them both in uncontrollable fits of giggles.

Eddie had asked to meet in an hour because he had to get there from the other side of town, and while it was just around the block from Richie, he still rushed to get ready on time.

He took a shower even though he’d already taken one earlier that day. He fought with his unruly hair that desperately needed a cut. He tried on almost every article of clothing he owned, before eventually landing on a pair of jeans that Eddie had helped him shop for and a button-down shirt that Eddie always said was “less obnoxious than the ‘bowling alley floor’ patterns he usually wears,” which of course was his way of saying he liked it.

He made one final attempt to make his hair look nice for once in his life before heading out the door, arriving at the coffee shop a good ten minutes early. Feeling like he was brimming with electric energy, and not wanting to seem overly eager, he took another lap around the block.

He was still early and Eddie still wasn’t there, so Richie just went inside and ordered a black coffee for himself and an almond-milk latte for Eddie. He paid for them both, then took a seat by the window, leg bouncing nervously as he scanned the street outside.

When Eddie came around the corner, it felt like a scene from a Rom Com. Richie would have sworn there was a strategic gust of wind billowing through his hair and the brightness all around him was turned up. It almost seemed like he was moving in slow motion, except suddenly he was in front of the cafe and walking inside, the jingling of the bell on the door snapping Richie harshly back into reality.

He leapt to his feet as Eddie spotted him and approached.

“Eddie,” he said breathlessly, unable to stop smiling despite his uneasiness. The sight of Eddie just lit up his entire world, even when their relationship was in such a precarious place.

“Hey, Richie,” Eddie responded, and he was smiling too. Not a big, goofy smile like when he and Richie were joking around and making each other laugh, but a genuine smile nonetheless.

Richie hesitated for a moment, unsure about whether to go in for a hug or a kiss or to just sit back down, but thankfully Eddie removed the guesswork by stepping in and wrapping his arms around Richie in a hug.

Richie happily hugged him back, trying his hardest to not melt into him entirely.

They separated, and Richie immediately felt the loss of Eddie’s body against his, but Eddie sat down at the table and he followed suit.

“I suppose we should get-” Eddie was gesturing vaguely to the counter, but he was cut off by the barista appearing next to him and placing both his and Richie’s coffees on the table. “-oh. Never mind. Thanks Richie.”

“Of course. Got you a caramel macchiato pumpkin spice frappuccino with extra foam.”

Eddie snorted in response. He hated froofy drinks almost as much as Richie did.

They both sipped their coffee and looked each other over.

Eddie had probably come right from the office. He was still in his work clothes; slacks and a button down shirt with a tie that must have been Stan’s because Richie didn’t recognize it. His hair was gelled down a bit, which he always did for work because he thought it looked more professional, but Richie preferred when he didn’t. He loved being able to run his fingers through Eddie’s soft hair, or nuzzle his face into it and smell his shampoo, and he hated when there was sticky gel weighing it down.

Eddie took Richie in as well. He really didn’t look bad. He looked freshly showered and he was actually wearing some of the nicer clothes he owned. If Eddie didn’t know him as well as he did, he’d probably think everything was fine. But Eddie knew Richie, inside and out, and he could see it was a facade. He could tell he was trying to look composed; he could tell that everything from his washed and combed hair to his neatly buttoned shirt had been a meticulous detail in an effort to look put-together.

The silence between them wasn’t exactly crushing, but it was definitely palpable. There was a nervous energy in the air as they sipped their coffee. Eddie’s eyes drifted to the side as he gazed out the window, watching people pass by on the street, but Richie could’t tear his eyes away from Eddie. He was mesmerized by him; the way his small hands cradled his coffee mug, the way his soft, pink lips wrapped around the rim when he took a sip, the way his throat moved when he swallowed. He wondered if Eddie had always been this astonishingly beautiful and he’d just forgotten or if Eddie had somehow gotten more stunning over the last three days.

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, not knowing if he should speak or if he should just wait for Eddie to take the lead. Stanley’s advice kept echoing in his head  _ “Show him you respect him. Show him you respect him. Respect, respect, respect.” _

He cleared his throat softly, tearing Eddie’s gaze away from the window. Looking into those beautiful brown eyes almost made Richie lose his train of thought before it started, but he quickly composed himself.

“How are you, Eddie? Is everything okay, like, at Stanley’s? Do you need anything else from home?”

Eddie shook his head slightly.

“No, I’m fine. Everything is fine. It’s actually been nice spending some time with Stan and Patty, since I hardly get to- oh my God, Richie, your hand!”

Richie followed Eddie’s gaze down to his right hand wrapped around his mug, which was still a swollen, black and blue mess. He’d almost forgotten about it now that he was here with Eddie, but he was certainly paying the price for not icing it that night.

Eddie’s face was twisted up with concern, and he reached a hand forward to ghost delicate fingers over Richie’s bruised knuckles. It was a sweet gesture, but it made Richie a bit uncomfortable. It was  _ his  _ fault his hand was like this; this was completely his own doing. He didn’t deserve this kind of sympathy for it, especially not from Eddie.

Not knowing what else to do, Richie just laughed nervously and quipped, “You should see the other guy.”

Eddie snorted out a small laugh as well, rolling his eyes slightly before focusing back on Richie’s hand.

“And by ‘the other guy’, you mean the drywall in our bedroom?”

“Yeah. That wall knows better than to show its face on our block again.”

It was a stupid joke, but Eddie still giggled a bit, fingers still stroking over Richie’s knuckles gently. Richie smiled in response, looking at Eddie adoringly. He’d missed this over the last few days. Just talking to Eddie and joking around and laughing. Even just sitting together; they would sometimes spend hours just quietly sitting in their living room or their bedroom, each of them privately reading or working on their laptop, not saying anything, but still comforted by each other’s presence.

“How about you, then?” Eddie asked as he finally retracted his hand and wrapped it back around his mug, lifting it up to his lips to take another sip. “Have you… have you been okay?”

Richie bit his lip, looking down at his hand and already missing the warmth of Eddie’s touch.

“I’m… I’m okay. Really.”

He added the last part when he raised his eyes to look at Eddie and found him looking incredulous. Eddie looked at Richie’s face searchingly for a moment, then nodded, still looking doubtful.

“You’ve got your show tomorrow. Do you think you’re ready?”

For a brief, idiotic moment, Richie actually considered lying and saying yes. But he kicked that aside immediately.

“I was… I was actually considering telling Charlie I can’t do it,” he looked sheepishly down into his cup of coffee, feeling embarrassed to look Eddie in the eye as he said it. “I’m just… I’m not really myself right now, Eddie. And I’m afraid… I’m afraid I’m gonna fuck it all up. Charlie’s really trying to start something here. He’s really relying on me, and so are a lot of other people, and… and I just don’t think I can do it.”

Richie hung his head in shame, squeezing his eyes shut. It sounded so pathetic when he said it out loud. It almost sounded selfish, when really he was trying to be the opposite. He didn’t want to screw up the whole show for everyone else by letting his personal issues get in the way.

Eddie’s hand covered his again, still gentle, but more firm this time.

“Richie. Richie, look at me.”

Richie opened his eyes and raised his gaze to see Eddie leaning in over the table, a serious expression on his face.

“Richie, you have to do it. You have worked so hard for this.”

Richie opened his mouth to respond, but he couldn’t think of anything coherent, so he just closed it again, still looking at Eddie’s stoic face.

“Promise me,” he looked deeply into Richie’s eyes, still holding his hand tightly. “Promise me you’ll do the show, Richie.”

Richie swallowed hard, unable to tear his eyes away from Eddie’s face, and the concern that was written all over it. When he spoke, it came out as a whisper.

“I promise, Eddie. I’ll do it.”

The corner of Eddie’s mouth turned upward as his face softened slightly. He slowly retracted his hand from Richie’s, but didn’t break eye contact. Something about the gentle, almost melancholy expression on his face, combined with the loss of the feeling of Eddie’s hand on his, finally broke something in Richie. He just couldn’t keep up the mirage anymore.

He started crying, noisily and unashamedly. Tears poured down his cheeks, and he buried his face in his hands, not wanting to see Eddie’s reaction to his breakdown.

“I’m… I’m so, so sorry, Eddie. I fucked up. I know I fucked up. I lied to you, and there’s no excuse for that. And the way I grabbed you, my God I just…”

He raised his head out of his hands to look up at Eddie, who had not changed expression, but was blinking rapidly as his eyes started to fill up with tears as well.

“You know I would never, ever hurt you,” Richie said softly, almost pleadingly, his voice strangled from crying. “Please, Eddie, you have to know that. Even if…”

Richie reached across the table to place a hand on top of Eddie’s, curling his fingers around his gently as he looked deeply into Eddie’s teary brown eyes. 

“Even if you don’t want to be with me anymore. Even if this is over. I just need to know that you know that. Please, you have to understand… no matter how angry I got, even if I got so angry I could just explode, you have to know that I would not have hurt you, and I never, ever would. Please, just… just tell me that you know that.”

A single tear fell out of Eddie’s eye and started to roll down his cheek, and Richie had to fight the urge to reach up and wipe it away. Eddie didn’t respond right away, but he moved his hand that was underneath Richie’s so that his thumb was on top of Richie’s knuckles and he stroked across them softly. After a minute, he began nodding, only slightly, barely noticeably, but nodding nonetheless.

Relief pooled in Richie’s stomach, even as he watched more tears trail down Eddie’s face. He gripped Eddie’s hand a little tighter, and Eddie didn’t pull away.

“I do know that, Richie. I do. I just…” Eddie swallowed hard, and sniffled slightly. “I was angry, and I was upset, and I got scared.”

Richie nodded his head rapidly, urgently trying to display validation and understanding. Eddie looked up at him through dark eyelashes that were wet with tears.

“But I know you would never hurt me, Richie. I do know that.”

Eddie gave him a small, tentative smile through his tears, and Richie smiled in response, his heart swelling with every second that Eddie was still letting Richie hold his hand.

“Eddie,” he leaned in farther. “I am so, so sorry that I scared you. I never meant to. And… I promise I’ll never do that again. I can’t promise I’ll never get angry, and I can’t promise I won’t lose my temper. But I promise you, I will never get violent again. Not even with a fucking wall. And I will never,  _ ever  _ grab you like that. Not ever again. I promise you that.”

“Richie,” Eddie said seriously. He wrapped his fingers around Richie’s hand, squeezing firmly. “I know you won’t. I know you’re not a violent person. But I need you to promise me, right here, right now, that you will  _ never  _ lie to me again. I just… I love you, Richie. I love you… more than I’ve ever loved anyone before. More than I even knew I  _ could  _ love somebody. I want to be with you, and nobody else. But I can’t be in a relationship where I’m being lied to. I just can’t, Richie.”

Richie reached up with his free hand, the one with bruised knuckles, and gently wiped the tears away from under Eddie’s eyes before curling his hand around the side of his face, brushing his thumb against the soft, tanned skin of his cheek.

“Baby,” Richie breathed out, and he felt Eddie shiver slightly under his touch. “I promise you. For as long you’ll have me. No secrets. No lies. Not ever.”

Richie had been gradually leaning in farther without realizing it, until he noticed he had leaned almost all the way across the table. He was hovering inches away from Eddie’s face. He could see the golden flecks in Eddie’s chocolate brown eyes, still glimmering with tears.

He froze there for a moment, breathing deeply, wondering if he was crossing a line, if he still needed to give Eddie some more space, but before he could decide one way or the other, Eddie was leaning forward as well. He closed the space between them and pressed his lips against Richie’s, kissing him softly.

Eddie hummed slightly as he pulled away, and Richie felt like his entire body was tingling. He had gone three days without kissing Eddie, and he never wanted to go that long again.

Richie had the urge to immediately lean back in. He wanted to kiss Eddie over and over, deeper, longer, with more love and passion, but Stan’s voice was still fresh in his mind, urging him to respect Eddie’s boundaries.

“What do you want, Eddie? What do you want, right now?”

Eddie raised a hand up to Richie’s jaw, brushing against the rough stubble there before resting his hand under Richie’s chin.

“I want to go home, Richie.”

Richie knew he didn’t mean their apartment.

He leaned back in to kiss Eddie again, a little deeper this time, and they were both breathless as they pulled away.

“I’ve missed you,” Eddie whispered against Richie’s lips. “I just feel so cold and alone at night without you there to hold me. I can’t stand it. I don’t… I don’t want to sleep without you anymore, Richie.”

He was shaking, and he’d started to tear up again. Richie cupped his face with both hands, looking deep into his eyes.

“I’ve missed you too, beautiful boy.”

Eddie closed his eyes and rested his forehead against Richie’s, their noses brushing together. He tightened his grip on Richie’s jaw, holding him in place.

“Richie…”

Richie hummed in response.

“Take me home.”

-

They walked back around the corner to their apartment with their hands tightly intertwined, walking so close together that their shoulders were brushing on every step.

They were still holding hands when they walked up the front steps, and they didn’t let go when Richie fished the key out of his pocket and opened the door.

He could feel Eddie right behind him as they walked through the door, and Eddie quickly shut the door behind him as Richie turned around to face him, both of them automatically stripping off their jackets and shoes.

Eddie’s hands found Richie’s collar and he pulled, almost yanked, Richie down to his lips to kiss him, more deeply, almost sloppily, now that they were in the privacy of their own home. He shoved his tongue deep into Richie’s mouth, and Richie opened up for him eagerly, overjoyed to be kissing Eddie again when he had honestly wondered if he ever would.

He backed Eddie up against the door, still kissing him passionately, and Eddie easily wrapped his arms around Richie’s neck, like everything was falling back into place.

Richie pressed the length of his body up against Eddie’s, not even necessarily with the intention of being sexual, he had just missed feeling Eddie’s body against his, and if the sigh that Eddie released against his lips was any indication, he felt the same way.

He hadn’t  _ meant  _ for it to be sexual, but it quickly went in that direction. Once he had Eddie pinned up against the door, Eddie lifted his legs up and wrapped them around Richie’s waist, crossing his ankles securely on the small of Richie’s back, and Richie dropped his hands to hook under Eddie’s thighs, holding him up, never once breaking the kiss.

Eddie threw his head back and moaned up into the ceiling as Richie began to kiss his way down his jaw. He’d always loved when Richie woud pin him up against the wall like this. It made him feel so secure and grounded.

Richie’s hands roamed up the sides of Eddie’s body until they reached his collar, where they loosened his tie and began to undo the buttons of his dress shirt before he stopped abruptly, breaking the kiss and pulling away to look at Eddie seriously, both of them breathing heavily.

“Is this… is this okay? We don’t have to… I mean, we can wait, if you’re not ready to be together, really together, again. I can sleep on the couch for a while, if you want me to. I’ve been sleeping there anyway, I wouldn’t m-”

Eddie clapped a hand over Richie’s mouth, cutting off his babbling.

“Richie,” he said seriously. “I want to put this behind us. I want to move forward. Both of us, together.”

He removed his hand from Richie’s mouth and replaced it with his lips, kissing him softly this time, chastely. He then pulled away, and reached up to pull his loosened tie up over his head, looking up at Richie with a sweet expression, his big eyes full of innocence.

“I also want you to fuck me until I can’t walk straight.”

The words went straight to Richie’s dick, and Eddie’s sweet smile turned into a knowing smirk at the moan that emerged from Richie. He pressed his groin hard into Eddie and dove back in to kiss at those beautiful pink lips, fingers going back to work on Eddie’s shirt. Eddie raised his own nimble fingers up to help with the last few buttons before shucking the shirt from his shoulders. It had barely hit the ground before Richie was pulling at the hem of his undershirt as well, and he raised up his arms for Richie to pull it up over his head, mussing his hair a bit in the process.

Richie dove quickly in and began to kiss and suck at the skin of his neck, and Eddie tilted his head back to expose more of the beautiful tanned skin of his throat. Richie roamed his mouth over every inch of it before moving down to kiss along his collar bone, ending with a sharp bite to Eddie’s shoulder that made him moan deep in his throat.

“Richie… take me to bed.”

He didn’t have to be told twice. He returned his grip to Eddie’s thighs, flexing his fingers around them and squeezing the firm muscles. Good Lord, Eddie had these legs that just wouldn’t quit.

He hauled Eddie off the door, and Eddie wrapped his arms back around Richie’s neck. Eddie tightened his legs that were still wrapped around Richie’s waist, squeezing with his thighs, causing Richie to moan and tighten his grip. 

They kissed some more as Richie stepped backwards away from the door, until Richie pulled away abruptly, peeking over Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie furrowed his brow, confused, and turned his head around to see Richie straighten the rug with his foot before turning around and starting to carry Eddie down the hallway and towards the stairs.

Eddie almost felt like he was in a daze. He stared, transfixed, at the rug over Richie’s shoulder, now perfectly straightened.

“You never care if that rug is crooked…” he mumbled in Richie’s ear.

Richie shrugged slightly, as well as he could while he was carrying Eddie.

“I guess I do now. I care because you do.”

It was the smallest thing, but Eddie felt almost overwhelmed. He didn’t know whether to cry again or to start laughing at the absurdity of it all, but he decided to forgo both and just kiss Richie again. He cupped Richie’s face with both hands, kissing him deeply.

Richie had barely made it to the foot of the stairs, but he was too distracted by Eddie’s lips to continue on his journey. Instead he pushed Eddie back up against the wall at the base of the staircase, kissing him back and sucking Eddie’s bottom lip into his mouth, rolling it between his teeth.

Eddie was already starting to feel a bit dizzy, almost drunk with sexual desire, but he still seized the opportunity to undo the buttons on Richie’s shirt, trembling fingers making quick work of them before reaching up to push it off Richie’s broad shoulders.

Richie briefly released his grip on Eddie’s thighs to allow the shirt to fall off his arms and onto the floor before planting his hands back on Eddie’s hips and pulling him back off the wall, sliding his hands around to grip his ass, squeezing slightly.

Eddie pulled away from the kiss to let out another moan, and Richie buried his face back in Eddie’s neck. If Eddie’s thighs were amazing, then his ass was just other-wordly. 

Richie carried Eddie up the stairs and quickly took him into their bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed with Eddie in his lap. He raised a hand up to Eddie’s chin, which was smooth and freshly shaved, and pulled him down for another kiss.

Eddie had his eyes closed as he kissed Richie back, but when he opened them to start to trail kisses down his jaw, he froze suddenly, paused halfway between Richie’s chin and his ear. He was looking behind Richie at the bed, which was still neatly made, just as Eddie had left it, and in that moment what Richie had said downstairs finally registered with him.

“Have you really been sleeping on the couch?” he murmured against Richie’s skin, and Richie nodded underneath his lips.

Eddie pulled away, just enough to look down at Richie’s face. Richie slid his hands up from where he was gripping Eddie’s ass to rest on his hips, fingers brushing gently over the dimples on the small of his back.

“I just couldn’t sleep in here without you, Eddie.”

It pained him a bit, to think about Richie spending the last three nights sleeping on their old, lumpy couch. But at the same time, he understood.

“I…” he looked deep into Richie’s eyes and swallowed hard, stroking a hand through Richie’s hair. “I couldn’t sleep without you either. It was so hard, falling asleep at night without you next to me. Without you holding me.”

He’d been gradually moving back in towards Richie, until at the final sentence his lips were actually brushing against Richie’s as he spoke. Richie closed the gap between them with another kiss, barely a brushing of lips.

“You won’t have to,” he whispered into Eddie’s parted lips. “Not ever again. I’m gonna hold you every night. Forever.”

Eddie smiled against Richie’s lips.

“Forever,” he echoed, before pressing back in for another kiss.

Eddie reached down for the hem of Richie’s undershirt, pulling it up over Richie’s head and then tossing it back over his own shoulder. He smiled to himself and stifled a laugh as he thought of the trail of clothing they had left from the front door to here. They just couldn’t help themselves.

He never could help himself around Richie, not since they’d started dating. Not since he started seeing him in that light, since he finally woke up and realized just how  _ hot  _ his childhood friend had become. Not since he got to see the glory that he was hiding under his clothes, particularly in his pants.

Eddie placed his hands on Richie’s shoulders and pushed him gently, breaking the kiss as Richie fell onto his back on the bed, his glasses knocked askew. He reached up to push them back into place as Eddie attached himself to Richie’s neck, kissing and sucking before biting a trail down to his shoulder. Richie sighed deep in his throat and stroked lazily up and down Eddie’s bare sides as Eddie began to kiss and nip down further, painting his way across Richie’s chest with his lips.

Eddie took a moment to just lay the side of his face right in the center of Richie’s broad chest, nuzzling his cheek against the skin. The dark chest hair was a bit coarse against the freshly shaved skin of his face, but he didn’t mind at all. He’d always found hairy men to be very sexy; there was something about it that was so rugged, and so, well...  _ manly _ , and it just made him weak.

He turned his face to press a kiss into the center of Richie’s chest, then continued on his mission down Richie’s body, looking up at Richie as he made a trail down with his lips and his tongue. 

Richie had propped himself up on his elbows to watch Eddie, not wanting to miss a second of this. Eddie maintained eye contact as he moved further down, and he had a hungry look in his eyes as he reached the waistband of Richie’s pants, a look that shot straight to Richie’s already throbbing erection.

Eddie popped the button and undid the zipper on Richie’s jeans, stepping back off the bed to strip his pants all the way off before reaching back up to rid him of his boxers as well. Richie was already fully hard, and Eddie looked ready to drop to his knees and put his beautiful mouth to work, but Richie stopped him by sitting up and grabbing onto the front of Eddie’s belt, pulling him in between his legs.

He made quick work of Eddie’s belt before undoing the button and zipper of his work slacks, then suddenly froze with his fingertips curled just under the waistband, poised to pull them down.

Eddie’s arousal was apparent; there was an unmistakable bulge pressing through the gap in his unzipped fly. But still, Richie felt tentative. He almost felt like it was their first time again. He was just working his head around whether he should ask for permission, whether he should confirm consent again, when Eddie impatiently pushed his hands away. He tucked his thumbs under the waistband of his own pants and underwear and pushed them down together, stepping out of them and immediately climbing back into Richie’s lap, planting his tanned, muscular thighs on either side of him.

They gasped simultaneously as their bodies pressed together with nothing in between, their bare erections rubbing against each other.

The feeling unleashed something in Richie. He wrapped his arms around Eddie and fell back on the bed, immediately rolling them over and pinning Eddie beneath him and settling between his spread legs as he reattached their lips, plunging his tongue back into Eddie’s mouth.

Eddie wrapped his limbs tightly around Richie, arms folded around Richie’s neck and legs wrapped snugly around Richie’s waist, holding him in place on top of him. Richie was so tall, with such long limbs and broad shoulders, he always dwarfed Eddie, and Eddie loved having Richie spread out on top of him like this. It felt so secure, so safe…

And also, it turned him on beyond belief.

He flailed wildly with his left hand, searching blindly for the nightstand without pulling his lips away from Richie’s, and knocking over the clock on top of it in the process, making them both laugh into their kissing.

It wasn’t at all like Eddie to be trying to rush through foreplay like this; he loved the buildup almost as much as he loved the sex itself. He loved all the kissing and the touching, the foundation of intimacy that was laid out by the exploration of each other’s bodies, even if they were already well-acquainted with each other at this point.

But at the same time, Eddie almost felt like he was throbbing. He wanted Richie inside of him so badly he thought he’d just about die. He needed it, and he needed it  _ now _ .

Three days of abstinence. Eddie supposed that was the amount of time required to turn him into a total slut for Richie’s cock. If he hadn’t been one already.

He eventually found his way into the top drawer of the nightstand and his hand closed around their bottle of lube, and Richie pulled away from the kiss to take it out of his hand.

“Let me,” he whispered, but he also searched Eddie’s face for any semblance of objection.

Eddie smiled and nodded up at Richie, and spread his already trembling legs as Richie moved down.

“Hurry up,” Eddie commanded playfully, propping himself up on his elbows to watch Richie as he settled between his legs. “I want that huge dick in me, pronto.”

They both laughed, Eddie gazing adoringly down at Richie, and Richie looking back up at him with equal love and appreciation. They’d both missed this; not just the sex itself, but the intimacy they had with each other, the ease of being able to laugh with a lover like this.

Richie meant to oblige Eddie’s request. He really did. But then those beautiful, perfectly tanned golden thighs were right there, right in front of his face, just begging to be worshipped.

And worship them he did. He pressed a long, lingering kiss to the scalding hot skin of Eddie’s inner thigh before pulling away and nuzzling his nose into the area. He could hear Eddie gasp up above him.

“So fucking beautiful,” he murmured into his skin before turning his head to pay attention to his other thigh, covering the area in tiny kisses that gradually turned into little nips, surely leaving marks in the soft, buttery skin, claiming the territory.

He turned his face to rub a cheek against Eddie’s thigh, the stubble scratching against the sensitive skin and making Eddie writhe into the mattress. 

“Oh,  _ Richie _ !” Eddie moaned breathily up into the ceiling, his eyes squeezed shut, his upper body still propped up on his elbows. His thighs were visibly shaking as he fought the urge to close his legs around Richie. “Richie… Richie!”

Richie scrambled to open the bottle of lube that was still tightly grasped in his hand, wanting to continue leading Eddie down this road of pleasure. He squirted a generous amount onto his middle finger and slid it down between Eddie’s cheeks, making him gasp and instinctively spread his legs even wider, allowing Richie full access.

He brushed his finger over Eddie’s hole and began to push in slowly, noting how tight he was after only a few days apart. Still, Eddie moaned urgently, giving him the encouragement to slide the finger into the tight heat of his ass, all the way up to the knuckle.

He’d only just begun moving the finger in and out when Eddie rasped out, “Another one.”

Richie glanced up at him incredulously, worried about hurting Eddie by going too fast. He had just opened his mouth to voice his concerns when Eddie added a desperate beg of “Please!”

Richie just couldn’t say no to that. He quickly coated his pointer finger with lube as well, working it into Eddie alongside the other one.

Eddie’s lust-weakened forearms just couldn’t hold him up any longer once Richie got that second finger inside. He collapsed, flat onto his back, moaning and gasping up into the ceiling as Richie began to slowly move his fingers in and out, scissoring them and curling them upwards.

Eddie was pressed down into the mattress, his fingers tangling in the sheets as he gripped them for dear life, but he almost felt like he was floating. Just feeling full again… he’d been so lonely for the last three days and nights, he’d felt so empty, both figuratively and literally. He wanted, no, he  _ needed  _ to be full again, to be whole again, in the way only Richie could make him feel.

He had just opened his mouth to beg for another finger when Richie seemed to read his mind. He heard the cap of the lube bottle once again and felt the tip of Richie’s ring finger working its way into him alongside the other two.

Richie just held the three fingers inside him for a moment, stretching him wide and stroking at his inner thigh, ghosting fingers over the hickeys that were already blooming on the beautiful skin. As he started to move his fingers, slowly thrusting them in and out of Eddie, he kissed his way back up his stomach, slowly working his way up to his chest. 

Richie pulled one of Eddie’s perky, pink nipples into his mouth, sucking gently before kissing his way across his chest to lick and suck at the other. His free hand came up to rub a thumb over the stimulated, spit-slick nipple, as his other hand continued to work Eddie open.

By this point, Eddie was absolutely shouting praises to Richie and declarations of love in addition to scattered random words and syllables. His ecstasy was apparent, it was written all over his face, all over his body, it was falling out of his mouth, and it almost made Richie want to cry again.

Instead he raised his head up to capture Eddie’s lips in a searing kiss, pouring a silent promise into him, to always make him feel this way, now and forever.

“Richie,” Eddie breathed out against his lips. “Richie… fuck me.”

Richie pressed another kiss against Eddie’s lips before he pulled away, looking down at his gorgeous face. Eddie’s eyelids fluttered open, his big dark eyes were glassy and cloudy with lust. His cheeks were flushed pink, his lips were parted, swollen and red.

Richie stroked his knuckles down Eddie’s soft jaw.

“Beautiful boy…”

He kissed Eddie again, softly, tenderly, and slowly slid his fingers out of him, leaning back and sitting up on his knees as he grabbed up the discarded bottle of lube. Eddie pulled his knees up to his chest, his entire body trembling as he watched Richie’s movements intently, but Richie suddenly froze, bottle of lubricant clutched tightly in his hand.

He looked back up at Eddie, an unsure expression on his face, and Eddie raised his eyebrows at him, feeling a bit nervous at Richie’s uneasiness.

“Um,” Richie began, voice small. “Do you… do you want me to put on a condom? I don’t mind, if it makes you feel… safer.”

Richie smiled down at him understandingly, but Eddie immediately shook his head, not breaking eye contact with Richie.

“I trust you,” Eddie responded softly, but seriously. “I do.”

Richie was only so strong of a man, and that was definitely more than he could handle. He started crying again, covering his face ashamedly with a hand, periodically choking out “I’m sorry” and “Eddie” between sobs.

Eddie released his grip on his own legs and let his feet fall flat on the mattress, sitting up to wrap one hand around to Richie’s back and rub soothingly, the other hand tugging at Richie’s arm to pull his hand away from his face.

“Richie…”

Richie looked down at him, eyes still brimming with tears, and Eddie looked back up at him with eyes that were adoring, but also still hooded with lust.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again. “I’m so sorry, Eddie. I'm sorry that I hurt you. I just want… I just want to be with you. To make you feel happy. To make you feel loved.”

“You do, Richie,” Eddie reassured him, stroking comfortingly up and down his back. “You make me happy. You always have. You make me feel loved. And I want to be with you too.”

He quirked up his cute little half-smile, and Richie just melted. He wrapped Eddie up in his arms and captured his lips in a passionate kiss, slowly lowering him back down onto his back on the bed.

“Thank you for taking me back,” Richie whispered against Eddie’s parted lips. “Thank you for… coming home.”

Eddie cradled Richie’s face in his hands, wiping the tears away with his thumbs. He leaned up to give him another kiss.

“Okay, enough crying,” Eddie ordered, but he still had a loving smile on his face. “Just fuck me already.”

They both laughed as Richie got back into position and thoroughly lubricated his dick. Eddie mused for a moment that even through his crying, Richie’s erection hadn’t gone down in the slightest, and wondered briefly if crying was becoming an intrinsic element of Richie’s sexual arousal.

His thought process was abruptly derailed when he felt the tip of Richie’s bare cock pressing into him and his mind went blank.

Richie pushed in slowly, as slowly as he possibly could, bracing himself with a hand on the pillow next to Eddie’s head and trying to hold himself steady. He’d made it about halfway before Eddie, ever the impatient bottom, wrapped his legs around Richie’s waist and used the leverage to push himself down onto Richie’s cock the rest of the way, both of them arching their backs and gasping as he bottomed out.

Richie began to move inside of him, slowly, almost agonizingly so, before gradually picking up the pace. Eddie’s breath quickened as Richie started to fuck into him in earnest. He always felt so full when Richie was inside of him, and he only felt more so after days of feeling so empty and lost.

Richie dropped down to attach his lips back to Eddie’s neck. Their chests moved together. Richie reached down to hook a hand underneath Eddie’s thigh, hauling his leg up even higher on Richie’s back, changing the angle and earning himself a gasp out of Eddie. His other hand found Eddie’s, intertwining their fingers and pressing Eddie’s hand down into the pillow by his head, leaving Eddie’s free hand to drag dull nails down Richie’s strong, muscular back.

They both loved sex, they always had. From the night they’d first gotten together, their sex life had been nothing short of spectacular; the sex they had was as amazing as it was frequent. But now, it was like they were discovering each other’s bodies all over again, re-learning each other’s triggers, each other’s turn ons.

It was sweet. It was absolutely beautiful love-making, but Eddie still found himself craving more. He felt almost depraved, after three nights of going to bed without Richie, and he could feel Richie holding back. He was still being tentative, almost like he was afraid of breaking Eddie.

Eddie disentangled his hand from Richie’s and wrapped both his arms and legs around Richie, pulling him in tight. Before Richie even knew what was happening, Eddie had rolled them over so that he was on top, Richie still inside of him.

Richie lay on his back, slightly flummoxed, his glasses having fallen slightly down his nose, his arms having landed loosely against the pillows next to his head. It took him a moment to regain his bearings, and Eddie had already started moving again.

Eddie planted his hands solidly against Richie’s broad chest, using the leverage to help him move up and down, quickly building up a pace that was more rapid than the previous one. After a moment, Richie caught on, placing his hands on Eddie’s hips and helping him to fuck himself down on Richie’s cock. Although he’d been caught off guard at first, having Eddie take charge so aggressively like this and take what he wanted… it was going straight to his throbbing erection, which was still buried deep inside of Eddie.

“Oh, Richie…” Eddie’s eyelids fluttered closed, and he took one hand off of Richie’s chest to bury in his own hair. “Oh God, yes… yes, yes,  _ yes _ !”

“Oh  _ fuck _ , Eddie!”

Eddie pulled his hand out of his hair and slammed it down against the headboard, using the additional leverage to pick up his pace, to the point that it was almost brutal. There really was something animalistic about him right now, almost feral, the hand on Richie’s chest was starting to claw into him, his nails leaving red lines across Richie’s skin.

“Eddie,” Richie gasped out. “Eddie, oh my God, Eddie, I’m gonna… I’m gonna…”

His orgasm had almost snuck up on him, leaving him with a very short warning period for Eddie. He tightened his grip on Eddie’s hips, trying to lift him off of Richie’s cock, but Eddie resisted him. He squeezed his thighs tightly around Richie’s hips and clenched around his cock.

“Come inside me,” he whispered urgently. “Please. I want to feel it.”

Richie didn’t even really have the time to register what he’d said before he was coming; his orgasm washed over his entire body, making him tingle from head to toe. His back arched off the bed as he released inside of Eddie.

Eddie only lasted another brief moment before he was coming as well. The second he felt Richie’s hot come filling him up, as soon as he felt his insides being painted, he was throwing his head back and moaning loudly, practically screaming up into the ceiling as his orgasm overtook him. 

Richie struggled to catch his breath underneath him as we watched Eddie ride out the final waves. He hadn’t realized it was possible for sex with Eddie to get any better, it was already perfection from their very first time, but this was beyond perfection. Coming inside of Eddie, and watching that send him over the edge… it was almost a religious experience.

He stayed inside him for a long time afterwards, both of them huffing deep breaths and staring into each other’s eyes. They both realized how special this was, and what a significant moment it was for their relationship, and neither wanted to break the spell.

Eventually Richie began to consider it was time to pull out, and he reached around to Eddie’s hips to lift him off of his softening cock. 

Eddie, in response, made a small noise of distress and fell forward, curling onto Richie’s chest.

“Not yet,” Eddie nuzzled down into the center of Richie’s sweaty chest, wrapping his hands around Richie’s broad shoulders. “I don’t wanna… I’m not ready to be empty again.”

Richie let out a breathless chuckle, but he still wrapped his arms tightly around Eddie, holding him close. Eddie made a happy noise in response and rubbed his cheek against Richie’s chest.

They stayed like that for a long while as the falling light of the evening started to give way to darkness, and with the setting sun the room began to grow cold. Once Richie felt Eddie shiver on top of him, he knew it was time to stop basking in the afterglow.

He finally rolled Eddie over onto his back and began to pull out of him. Eddie immediately protested again, tightening his grip around Richie and making a noise of distress.

“Baby,” Richie mumbled in his ear soothingly. “We’ve got to get you cleaned up. Then we can cuddle again, okay?”

Eddie made another distinctly unhappy noise, but he loosened his vice grip on Richie and allowed him to pull away, pulling his now soft cock out of him.

Richie quickly hopped out of bed and went to the bathroom. Eddie could hear the sink running in the bathroom as Richie waited for the water to get warm, and he smiled to himself as he flopped over onto his stomach, feeling some of Richie’s come start to drip out of him.

He happily snuggled his face down into the soft pillow beneath him. He felt limp and boneless, he’d never felt so fucked out before, he’d thought it would make him feel weak or helpless, but he didn’t. He felt so safe.

When Richie came back into the room with the warm, damp towel and saw Eddie lying there on his stomach with come dripping out of him, it made such a beautiful and irresistible picture that he almost got hard again on the spot. He wanted to wrap Eddie up in his arms and smother him with kisses, but instead he just settled for climbing onto the bed and wiping him down.

Eddie would have thought he’d feel embarrassed at being cleaned so intimately, but he only felt appreciative of his lover. Richie took care of him. He always did.

Richie finished cleaning both of them off and tossed the towel into the hamper before climbing back into bed with Eddie, pulling the blanket up over both of them.

“Nap?”

“Nap,” Eddie agreed, curling back into his chest.

Richie tossing the towel into the hamper and hearing it hit the bottom made Eddie realize that Richie had put away all the laundry he’d folded on the day he’d run out. From his place on Richie’s chest, he glanced around the room, really looked at it for the first time since they’d come in, and realized it was… well, it was spotless. Come to think of it, the whole apartment, or at least the parts of it he’d seen on the journey from the front door to the bed, had been absolutely spotless.

“Richie?”

“Mmmm?” he tilted his head down to meet Eddie’s gaze.

“Did you… did you clean? While I was gone?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? You don’t care if things are clean.”

“Yeah, but you do.”

“But I wasn’t even here.”

“Yeah, I know,” Richie swallowed hard, gazing down at Eddie’s furrowed brow and trailing a hand slowly up and down his back. “I… I had to believe that you could walk back in the door any minute, Eddie. I had to believe that you would come back. That it wasn’t over.”

Eddie’s chest felt oddly tight, but he just burrowed his face back in Richie’s chest, inhaling deeply and being comforted by the smell of Richie’s soap mixed with the sweat that was still dampening his dark chest hair.

Richie held him close, so close he almost thought they would meld into each other’s bodies. It was like he was afraid if he loosened his grip even the tiniest bit, Eddie would slip away from him. He was afraid he would fall asleep for this nap and when he woke up, he would be back on the couch all alone and Eddie would still be gone.

But like he said, he had to believe that Eddie would come back. He had to believe that Eddie would still be here when he woke up. 

He had to believe he was going to marry him one day.

Richie actually fell asleep first for a change; usually Eddie would fall asleep first and Richie would be up for a while battling with his own mind before he could finally quiet his racing thoughts and drift off to sleep. But now, he was exhausted from getting bad sleep on the couch for days, and the bed felt so warm and cozy, and he had Eddie back in his arms, and he was out like a light.

Eddie, in contrast, was feeling strangely alert, despite the post-sex exhaustion in his body.

For a while, he watched Richie, looking up at him from his chest, revelling in the rare opportunity to actually watch Richie sleep. He looked so peaceful and serene, it just made Eddie’s heart melt.

He could hear his phone buzzing from where it was still in the pocket of his work slacks, which were in a pile on the floor at the foot of the bed. He ignored it at first, but eventually he extracted himself from his peacefully sleeping boyfriend to fish it out of the pocket and check it.

It was about a dozen text messages from Stan.

Eddie smiled and sat on the foot of the bed. He’d told Stan he was going to meet Richie after work. There were a few messages asking how it was going and if Eddie was okay, then after not hearing from Eddie for hours, Stan had arrived at the correct assumption that Eddie and Richie had, as Stanley put it in one of his messages, ‘kissed and made up’.

Eddie turned around and carefully leaned over Richie’s sleeping form, silently taking a full-body picture displaying his shirtless torso and the blanket slung low on his hips, clearly showing that he was naked underneath.

He sent the picture to Stan and followed it immediately with a message.

> _ More than just kissed, but definitely made up. _

His phone immediately buzzed with the response.

> _ Gross. _

Eddie smiled and snorted a small laugh

> _ I’ll come by and pick up my things tomorrow. Thank you, Stan. For everything. _

> _ Yep _ .

Eddie tossed his phone on the bed and took one last look at Richie, who was still sound asleep, before he got up to put on a pair of sweatpants and one of Richie’s t-shirts. He gathered up their discarded clothes from the foot of the bed, then followed the trail of clothing they’d left all the way back to the front door, smiling at the memories of being pushed against the wall by Richie only hours before.

He dumped all their clothes in the washing machine in the kitchen, which gave him the opportunity to look around and see just how clean the house was. He had to admit he was impressed by Richie’s cleaning abilities; but more than that, he was touched. The effort that Richie had put into making the apartment nice, the way Eddie liked it, even when he was gone, it really meant… well, Eddie wasn’t even quite sure what it meant, but it certainly meant something.

He stood in the kitchen, turning in a circle and looking around at everything, everything that was theirs, and he felt oddly emotional.

Eddie had a sudden urge within him. He couldn’t wait for them to be in their own house, not just a place they were renting, not just a place they were currently residing in, but a place that truly belonged to  _ them _ .

Though he supposed maybe they should be married before they bought a house.

The thought made him shiver, as if a gust of cool wind had blown past him. He thought about Stan and Patty’s wedding planning, he thought about the excitement and the whimsy of it all, and now he knew more than ever that that was what he wanted. Specifically, it was what he wanted with  _ Richie _ .

He slowly climbed the stairs, feeling wistful as he drifted through the hallway and back into the bedroom. It was now completely dark, but Richie was still illuminated by the light of the outside street lamp, which shone through the open window and cast a dull orange hue over the room.

Eddie lay down on his side next to him, unable to contain his content smile as he stared at Richie’s sleeping face.

“I’m gonna marry you one day,” he whispered into the dark, and he would have sworn Richie smiled in his sleep.

We were wild and fluorescent, come home to my heart ~ Lorde, Supercut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one in the books! Thank you to everyone for leaving such amazing comments on this and on my other work. I've got some other stuff in the works right now, but I am always open to suggestions as well, so feel free to leave them!

**Author's Note:**

> EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY, I PROMISE.  
> Makeup sex WILL happen, and it will be magical, but unfortunately in order to have makeup sex, you have to have a fight first.  
> Part 2 is almost done and will be up later this week.


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